Neuroanatomy of Language

Question 1

Order of primary visual cortex for language processing?

Answer 1

Primary Visual Cortex (BD 17) – receives the message
↓
Visual Association Cortex (BD 18) - Analyze stimuli shape/length
(BD 19) – Recognize seen before
↓
Wernicke’s Area – superior temporal gyrus, posterior portion
↓
Broca’s
↓
Primary Motor Cortex – lateral portion close to Broca’s area
↓
Brainstem
CN VII – lips
CN IX – pharynx & soft palate
CN X – pharynx/vocal folds
CN XI – cranial branch
Cn XII - tongue
↓
Brainstem
CN VII – lips
CN IX – pharynx & soft palate
CN X – phayrnx/vocal folds
CN XI – cranial branch
Cn XII - tongue

Question 2

Where is the breakdown for dysarthria?

Answer 2

In information sent to the cranial nerves

Question 3

Where is the breakdown for receptive aphasia?

Answer 3

Wernicke’s area

Question 4

Where is the breakdown for expressive aphasia?

Answer 4

Broca’s

Question 5

Where is the breakdown in conduction aphasia?

Answer 5

Arcuate fasciculus

Question 6

What is conduction aphasia?

Answer 6

fluent but paraphasia error, repetition severely impaired, naming & writing also impaired, reading aloud impaired,

comprehension intact, reading comprehension preserved

Question 7

What is the arcuate fasciculus?

Answer 7

Bundle of axons that connect temporal and inferior parietal cortex to frontal lobe

Specifically connecting Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, crucial for processing and producing language

Latest regions to mature, undergoes a lateralization shift in adolescence

Question 8

What does damage to the arcuate fasciculus create?

Answer 8

Damage to this area contributes to conduction aphasia, schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations

Question 9

Connectivity studies arcuate fasciculus concomitate with superior longitudinal fasciculus has complex structures connecting multiple target areas in frontal cortex with multiple target areas in temporal and parietal cortex

Question 10

What is the left peri-sylvian cortex?

Answer 10

Region around lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure) includes both Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas

Includes inferior frontal gyrus, premotor cortex, upper temporal lobe and temporoparietal interface

Question 11

What is missing from wernicke-lichtheim-geschwind?

Answer 11

Does not account for range of aphasia syndromes
Does not allow for hierarchical nature of language
Linguistically underspecified
Anatomically underspecified

Question 12

What is the dual route model of language?

Answer 12

Cortical Organization of speech processing
Previous theories failed to consider task effects when mapping speech related processing systems

Question 13

What are the 3 concepts of the dual route model of language?

Answer 13

1. Acoustic speech information interfaces with two systems:
   
   • Conceptual & * Motor
2. Speech comprehension relies predominantly on conceptual/memory
   interface
3. Speech production is sensory & motor production

Question 14

What is the dual stream model, and what are the 2 streams?

Answer 14

similar to those seen auditory & visual systems
Ventral stream – processes speech for comprehension, auditory to conceptual
Dorsal Stream - acoustic signals frontal lobe articulatory networks, auditory to motor

Question 15

What is the dorsal stream?

Answer 15

WHERE
production aka form to phonology to articulation
left hemisphere dominant
sensorimotor
Left Sylvian parietal -temporal
Articulatory network inferior frontal (Broca’s)
lateral pre-motor areas for articulation

Question 16

What is the ventral stream?

Answer 16

WHAT
comprehension aka form to lexico-semantics to meaning
bilateral
temporal lobe
Posterior middle and inferior temporal gyrus
travel to ant. middle temporal

Question 17

What are connectomics?

Answer 17

Comprehensively mapping the neural elements and interconnections that constitute the brain
Advances in MRI allowed in vivo assessment (assessment in a living organism)
…research into circuit -level, connectome-wide and topological changes is stimulating the development of new aetiopathological* theories and biomarkers with potential for clinical translation.

Question 18

What are the 3 basic concepts in connectomics?

Answer 18

1. Defining the regions
2. Measuring connectivity between these regions
3. Network analysis

• determination of the cause of a pathology

Question 19

If you are right handed, what percentage of language representation is left/right? Bilateral?

Answer 19

Left- 96%, Right 4%, Bilateral 0%

Question 20

If you are left-handed, what percentage of language representation is left/right?

Answer 20

Left 70%, Right 15%, Bilateral 15%

Question 21

Which hemisphere is dominant for langauge?

Answer 21

LEFT

Question 22

About the left hemisphere?

Answer 22

Holds almost exclusively the ability to use syntax and phonology
Is largely organized such that the anterior, dorsal, and motor portions of the brain are important for production
And the posterior, ventral, and temporal lobe portions are important for comprehension

Question 23

What is the right hemisphere dominant for?

Answer 23

Visual-spatial skills
Pragmatics
Attention

Question 24

What does the right hemisphere NOT express?

Answer 24

Phonology
Syntax
Morphology

Question 25

Motor & Articulatory components/Prosody and Tone?

Answer 25

Motor control and motor planning
Dysarthria/Apraxia
Rhythm and tonal patterns

Question 26

Tasks vs. Process?

Answer 26

Tasks are made up of different processes or subcomponents of language
(Picture naming is a task made up of different processes)

Question 27

What is categorical perception?

Answer 27

perceive items as belonging to same category, thus more similar to each other and less similar to items form other categories
Speech stimuli intermediate between two phonemes are typically categorized as one or the other, with an abrupt boundary
Some people can still distinguish between two sounds judged to be in the same category

Question 28

What is selective attention with regard to speech perception?

Answer 28

ability to focus on some inputs while tuning out other

Question 29

What is the auditory figure ground?

Answer 29

Ability to pick out important sounds within a noisy background

Question 30

What is segmentation?

Answer 30

Process of identifying boundaries between words, syllables or phonemes in spoken natural language.

Question 31

What is coarticulation?

Answer 31

production of two or more speech sounds together so that one influences the other.

Question 32

What is abstraction?

Answer 32

suppose the existence of segments that are more or less different from the surface (i.e. phonetic facts)

Question 33

What are lexical choices?

Answer 33

choosing the content words (noun, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) in generated sentences.

Question 34

What is competition among choices?

Answer 34

newly acquired word will engage in competition with existing words that share its onset

Question 35

Retrieval of Correct choice?

Answer 35

selecting correct word among semantically similar competitors

Question 36

What is the motor theory of speech for word comprehension?

Answer 36

Infants imitate what they hear and match it motorically
Heavy emphasis of the speakers vocal tract constrictions , each phonetic gesture produced uniquely in vocal tract.

Adults form a motor representation of the spoken message – “embodiment”?
Problem – children understand better than they produce as do people with motor speech impairments

Question 37

What is the cohort model of speech for word comprehension?

Answer 37

A word is recognized at the point that a particular word can be distinguished from any of the other words in the word cohort set that was defined by the bottom up information in the signal

The critical recognition point of the word

Question 38

What is the uniqueness point?

Answer 38

the point only one word is consistent with the acoustic signal

Question 39

What is the TRACE Model?

Answer 39

Works in two directions
Allows either words or phonemes to be derived from a spoken message
By segmenting the individual sounds, phonemes can be determined from spoken words. By combining the phonemes words can be created and perceived

Question 40

What is a semantic network?

Answer 40

remise is that all ideas in your head are connected together. Activation of one concept can pull up related concepts. People organize their knowledge of the world based on their personal experience.

Question 41

What is spreading activation?

Answer 41

general elevation and availability of these semantic connections

enhances accessibility to concepts and increases likelihood of retrieval

Question 42

Syntactic ambiguity types?

Answer 42

Local and global ambiguity

Question 43

Which type of ambiguity?

“They are cooking apples”
Are apples being cooked or is that the type of apple

Answer 43

global

Question 44

Which type of ambiguity?

Various interpretations are possible at some point;
Ambiguity is solved by end of the sentence:

Jessica bought blue shirts and shoes that are pink.

Answer 44

local

Question 45

What is the garden path model?

Answer 45

Sentence structure leads to “wrong” interpretation of the sentence on the first reading.
Only one syntactical structure is considered
One is being led down the garden path…

Question 46

What is the constraint-based model?

Answer 46

the parser uses all sources of information to constrain meaning (syntactic, semantic )
Sentence processing involves immediate use of all available information to process understand the final outcome.
grammatical knowledge can constrain possible sentence interpretations