Temporal Lobe and Speech & Language development

Question 1

Primary Function of temporal lobe

Answer 1

Auditory signal interpretation and speech and language comprehension.

Question 2

Temporal Lobe region

Answer 2

Cortical level region of the brain

Question 3

Speech language comprehension:

Answer 3

Occurs through a system of connectivity and modularity
-Neural signal connections

Question 4

Modularity

Answer 4

Neurons responding to different aspects of speech

Question 5

Primary Auditory cortex (A1) Location

Answer 5

on Heschl’s Gyrus within the sylvian Fissure

Question 6

Primary Auditory cortex (A1)

Answer 6

-Primary auditory cortex is within the Sylvian fissure on the superior temporal plane.

-Primary auditory cortex is also called A1.

- Approximately 20 ms for sound to reach A1 from the cochlea.
(1000 ms in 1 second).
 -A1 has tonotopic organization that mirrors the tonotopic organization of the basilar
membrane.

-It is a frequency analyzer.

Question 7

Planum Temporale

Answer 7

Planum Temporale (PT) is a sensory motor integration region.
-PT is on the superior temporal plane
-PT connects the sensory cortex (temporal lobe) to the motor cortex (frontal lobe).
-PT is activated for word or sentence repetition. (Buchsbaum et al., 2011).
-PT is activated for phoneme-grapheme association (Dehaene et al., 2015).

Question 8

Medial-Posterior region of the Superior Temporal Gyrus

Answer 8

-Association cortex
-Within the language comprehension network
-Traditional Wernicke’s area
Medial-Posterior region of the Superior Temporal Gyrus function:
-Neurons respond to phonemes and syllables
-Organized by manner of articulation/place of articulation
-Feedback from experiences with lexical/semantic experience
-Bilateral damage to this brain region or connections to this brain regions results in word deafness/auditory verbal aphasia (Poeppel, 2001)
-Neurons respond for longer duration than A1/responds to more complex acoustic signals compared to A1

Question 9

MTG and ITG function:

Answer 9

-Neurons respond to spoken words
-lexical/semantic representation
-Connections to the middle to posterior STG

Question 10

Supramarginal Gyrus

Answer 10

Neuros here are also activated in response to spoken words

Question 11

Anterior temporal pole and anterior superior temporal gyrus

Answer 11

Activated during novel word learning
-Activated during word comprehension
-Activated for recognition/naming of spoken words within a category (e.g., tiger, leopard, cougar)
-Primary Progressive Aphasia (Hurley, 2012)