Speech and language

Question 1

Is the brain hardwired for language?

Answer 1

The brain seems to come with preexisting circuits for spoken language and written language recycles some of these circuits.

Question 2

What are the areas of the brain important for language?

Answer 2

Association cortices, temporal and parietal and frontal lobe, perisylvian language circuits.

Question 3

What do the left temporal and parietal cortices do for language?

Answer 3

Link the sounds and their semantic meaning.

Question 4

What does the left frontal cortex do?

Answer 4

issues motor commands organizing the production of speech.

Question 5

Where is the emotional content of speech housed?

Answer 5

The right hemishere.

Question 6

What is prosody?

Answer 6

Providing emotional valence by varying intensity, pitch and rhythm.

Question 7

What is the region associated with the ability to produce meaningful speech?

Answer 7

The left frontal hemisphere.

Question 8

What is Wernicke’s area?

Answer 8

The left posterior and superior temporal lobe. A region associated with the ability to connect sounds to their semantic meanings.

Question 9

What is Broca’s area?

Answer 9

The left posterior and inferior frontal lobe associated with the ability to organize speech grammatically.

Question 10

Where is language processed in the brain?

Answer 10

Language comprehension is processed in Wernicke’s area and language production is processed in Broca’s area.

Question 11

What is Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 11

Affects the ability to properly produce language efficiently. Patients have preserved comprehension but impaired repetition.

Question 12

What is Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 12

Affects the ability to properly understand spoken language. Speech production is fluent, melodic and abundant but non-sensical.

Question 13

What is conduction aphasia?

Answer 13

Damage to the arcuate fasciculus. Fluent language with articulary defects. Generally intact comprehension and impaired repetition.

Question 14

What is Alexia?

Answer 14

Inability to understand written language. Damage to the occipital temporal lobe in the visual word form area.

Question 15

What is agraphia?

Answer 15

Inability to produce written language. Damage to a region in the parietal lobe.

Question 16

What is Dysarthia?

Answer 16

The inability to properly move the muscles of the mouth, tongue, and larynx that mediate speech.

Question 17

Can you lack the ability to understand and produce spoken language and still be able to use language?

Answer 17

Yes! Deaf people are able to use a non verbal language to communicate.

Question 18

In the vast majority of people where is language located?

Answer 18

The left hemisphere.

Question 19

Where are language centers located for people who communicate non verbally?

Answer 19

Similar cortical areas to people who communicate verbally.

Question 20

What is the wada’s test?

Answer 20

Anesthetic is injected into the left carotid artery in order to anesthetize the left side of the brain while the patient is awake. They are then asked to speak to confirm (by their inability to do so) that their language centers are on the left hemisphere of the brain.

Question 21

What is the role of the right hemisphere in language?

Answer 21

The right hemisphere controls prosody and damage to the cortical areas of the right hemisphere correlating to the broca’s and wernicke’s area of the brain can cause aprodosdy where patients are unable to produce the normal tonal variance of speech.

Question 22

What has replaced the understanding of language areas in the brain?

Answer 22

Perisylvian brain circuits.

Question 23

What is dyslexia?

Answer 23

Problems understanding in written language. Sees reduced activation of the VWFA.