Lecture 8 - Language Lateralization and Memorization Flashcards
(42 cards)
How did Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke discover the speech areas of the brain?
examined the postmortem brain of patients who had aphasia and saw which sections of the brain were lesioned causing the aphasia
What is Broca’s aphasia?
the patient knows what they want to say but they cannot get the words; lesion causes motor or expressive aphasia
Where is the lesion for Broca’s aphasia?
frontal lobe of the left hemisphere
What is wernicke’s aphasia?
lesion causes sensory or receptive aphasia problem in language comprehension so the speech is meaningless
Where is the lesion for wernicke’s aphasia?
temporal lobe of the left hemisphere
In Broca’s aphasia what happens to comprehension and speech?
Comprehension - intact
Speech - not intact
In Wernicke’s aphasia what happens to comprehension and speech?
Comprehension - not intact
Speech - intact
On what side of the brain are the major language areas?
left hemisphere
Where is Broca’s area?
frontal lobe
Where is Wernicke’s area?
temporal lobe
What are the major language areas of the brain?
Broca’s area
Wernicke’s area
Primary auditory cortex
Primary visual cortex
Primary motor cortex
Primary somatic sensory cortex
What proved that left hemisphere contains the speech center and in what other ways was this further confirmed by Sperry and Gazanniga?
-lesions or stroke shows that the left hemisphere contains the speech centers
-split brain studies of Sperry and Gazanniga
What occurs in the split brain studies?
-the corpus callosum is cut as a treatment for intractable epilepsy
-patients seemed normal
-patients now had 2 functioning hemispheres disconnected from each other
What occurred in the setup with split brain patients in which a screen blocks visual input?
a stimulus was presented to one hand without visual input and the subject was asked what was in their hand
-if presented to the right hand the subject answers correctly because (the right hand is connected to the left brain)
-if presented to the left hand the subject can’t answer because (the left hand is connected to the right brain)
What occurred in the setup with split brain patients in which a subject fixes in the center of screen and a visual stimulus to one half of the visual field is presented?
-only if information is presented to the right visual field will the subject be able to answer correctly because the right visual field is connected to the left brain
What occurred in the setup with split brain patients in which a subject is presented a visual stimulus to one half of the visual field and is then asked to locate with their hand on the same side as the visual stimuli what they saw?
if information is presented too the right or left visual field in both cases the individual will be able to retrieve the object that they saw with the hand on the same side of the visual field the object was presented on
-this means that right brain can process the information the issue just lies with speech which is left lateralized
Can an object in the right visual field be expressed by a split brain patient verbally?
yes because it is processed by the left hemisphere where language is and can also reach for it or draw it since that is right hemisphere
Can an object in the left visual field be expressed by a split brain patient verbally?
no because it is processed by the right hemisphere which does not have the speech center but can reach for it or draw it since that is right hemisphere
What is an important function of the left hemisphere?
speech
What is an important function of the right hemisphere?
spatial abilities
emotional color of language
What happened in split brain patients in regards to the spatial abilities?
left hand works for motor tasks because that connect to the right hemisphere and the right hand does not work cause that is connected to the left hemisphere
In split brain patients how does each Hemi brain operate?
independently
Despite the fragmented system for processing information in split Brian patients why do they still have a sense of acting as a single person?
the left brain has the ability to rationalize
How were the brain centers which process emotion identified?
animal experiments; and human subject with a bilateral lesion of the emotion area