Language function

Question 1

What is the difference between the left and right hemispheres of the brain?

Answer 1

Language areas are only found in the left side of the brain.

But each hemisphere has each lobe and specialised cortexes.

Question 2

What is Broca’s area?

Answer 2

• Found in the frontal lobe

- Responsible for converting thought into speech

Question 3

What is Wernicke’s area?

Answer 3

• Found in the temporal lobe

- Plays an important role in understanding other people’s speech and for producing speech which makes sense

Question 4

What would damage to either Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area create?

Answer 4

• Result in aphasia - inability or impaired ability to understand or produce speech.
• Broca’s aphasia (aka productive aphasia) may make speech stilted, based mainly on using nouns, no connective words. It is effortful but lacks richness.
• Wernicke’s aphasia (aka receptive aphasia or fluent aphasia) speech is effortless but flows easily but the meaning of words is lost.