Lecture 3 - Brain Structures

Question 1

language is localized to certain areas in what hemisphere?

Answer 1

LEFT

Question 2

Lateralization

Answer 2

what SIDE is language function on?

but the brain is way more complicated than that

very basic dichotomy onto what side of the brain language is on (usually left)

Question 3

Localization

Answer 3

what EXACT REGION is language function found in?

fronto-temporal regions

Question 4

Right Hemisphere

Answer 4

does emotional processing, so damage to it can result in trouble understanding prosody (pitch and timing cues in language that cue you into the listener’s emotional or affective state)

Question 5

women tend to have a more …. pattern of language processing than men

Answer 5

distributed

Question 6

How do we know all this stuff about left-lateralization?

Answer 6

BRAIN IMAGING (fMRI, PET)

MEG, EEG

original way: brain damaged peoples

Question 7

PET

Answer 7

once MRI came onto the scene it pretty much stopped being used cause it requires the use of a radioactive tracer in the blood stream

Question 8

Areas in Left Hemisphere important for brain processing of language

Answer 8

Broca’s area
Wernicke’s area
arcuate fasciculus (fiber tract)

Question 9

Arcuate Fasciculus

Answer 9

to repeat something, process in W and sent to B along the a.f.

thought to rapidly transmit info from one area to another brain area

connects Wernicke’s to Broca’s subcortically

Question 10

Broca’s Area

Answer 10

is in the frontal lobe right next to motor areas that produce the movements involved in speech (lips, tongue, larynx)

damage leads to a non-fluent aphasia: labored speech, don’t produce function words (articles, prepositions) if they can produce words at all

TAN TAN TAN

Question 11

Wernicke’s Area

Answer 11

very close to auditory processing areas

back of the left temporal lobe near auditory association area

damage in the general region = fluent aphasia (people speak fluently, and use a lot of neologisms) = fluent but nonsense

issues related to comprehension/sensibility

Question 12

Damage to the Insular Cortex

Answer 12

largest effects on fluency

folded up in the fronto-temporal area

Question 13

Damage to Arcuate fasciculus, results in…?

Answer 13

conduction aphasia, where comprehension and production are basically fine, but you can’t repeat things

the idea is that you have to process that in the auditory processing areas and send it to Broca’s to create that motor plan for producing that word - can’t do that if they’re severed from one another

Question 14

Damage-area correlation is not

Answer 14

so clear-cut

Question 15

what happens with kids (more plastic)?

Answer 15

kids who have sustained a brain lesion: the basic finding is that if you’re very young and have sustained a brain injury it doesn’t really matter what side it is on

after some time, you can re-acquire language equally well

doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you’re of the opinion that there is a single language organ in the left hemisphere that does language

Question 16

it may be that when you’re born there’s a general processing bias for the Left Hemisphere BUT

Answer 16

if you lose those areas the right hemisphere is “just as happy to take over”

Question 17

Best explanation so far for Broca and Wernicke’s Areas developing as language centers

Answer 17

these areas become language areas because they happen to have slight edge in processing things