Week Ten - Biological Basis of Communication

Question 1

Gender differences of language?

Answer 1

females begin talking earlier, better verbal memory, reading and spelling, more fluent, but less lateralized

Question 2

What declines with age?

Answer 2

ability to acquire language

Question 3

Language-related biological events can only happen during…

Answer 3

the critical period

Question 4

lateralisation of language occrs when?

Answer 4

during childhood

Question 5

What does neuroimaging allow?

Answer 5

allow insight into living brain processes

Question 6

What is the subtraction method?

Answer 6

Main method used in brain imagining
Participants carries out one task, then does a variant of that task, subtract image of one from image of other to identify where critical difference is located

Question 7

Problems with subtraction method? 4

Answer 7

Its difficult to find appropriate comparisons
areas may be active without being critical
functions may be inconsistently located across peoples brains
cant always tell what high activity means for processing

Question 8

ERP’s?

Answer 8

Electrodes are placed on the scalp to record activity of the brain.

1. present a stim
2. measure voltage changes
3. examine time course of brain activity during task

Question 9

Temporal vs spatial resolution in ERP’s?

Answer 9

good temporal, poor spatial

Question 10

MEG?

Answer 10

measures magnetic activity in the brain. difficult and expensive

Question 11

Temporal vs spatial resolution in MEG?

Answer 11

good temporal and spatial

Question 12

CAT?

Answer 12

x-ray images taken from all angles around the brain, produces integrated image of medium resolution

Question 13

Temporal vs spatial resolution in CAT?

Answer 13

Neither great nor bad spatial and temporal

Question 14

PET?

Answer 14

radioactive glucose injected into blood.

given a task, detectors measure where the glucose travels to/used, produce 3d model of the brain

Question 15

fMRI?

Answer 15

measures energy released by hemoglobin in the brain areas using the most glucose

Question 16

Temporal vs spatial resolution in fMRI?

Answer 16

good spatial, reasonable temporal

Question 17

PET, fMRI and ERP?

Answer 17

fMRI not as good as ERP but more precise than PET

Question 18

TMS?

Answer 18

powerful magnets stimulate the cortex, recording physical response

Question 19

How is TMS different from all other neuroimaging techniques?

Answer 19

It is the reverse, causes brain activity rather than observing it

Question 20

Aphasia

Answer 20

Loss of ability to speak

Question 21

Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 21

non-fluent
slow, laborious, hesitant, little intonation, articulation problems - DEFICIT IN SPEECH PRODUCTION
can understand language

Question 22

Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 22

deficit in speech comprehension
long utterances that make little sense; filled with nonsense words
- fluent but nonsensical
- adequate syntactic structure
- function words in tact, content words hard to find
- poor comprehension
can’t understand own or others language

Question 23

Modern conceptions of Broca aphasia?

Answer 23

deficits in

• syntax
• passive sentences
• determiners

Question 24

Modern conceptions of Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 24

speech is incoherent

poor semantic judgement (eg dog, cat, turnip)

Question 25

Pure word deafness?

Answer 25

lesion disconnects wernicke’s area and heschl’s gyrus (audition).
can hear but can’t understand due to no auditory signals not getting to wernicke’s area

Question 26

Conduction aphasia?

Answer 26

lesion damages the arcuate fasciculus; discomments broca and wernicke area
can hear and understand, but cant repeat what they hear

Question 27

Agrammatism?

Answer 27

Deficit in sentence construction (cant put words in right order)
- content words preserved, function and inflectional endings not so much

Question 28

Jargon aphasia

Answer 28

extreme type of fluent aphasia, major word-finding problems (syntax intact)

Question 29

Jargon aphasia two common symptoms/experiences?

Answer 29

Paraphasia: substitution of content words
Neologisms: made-up words

Question 30

Anomia?

Answer 30

impairment retrieving names of object

occurs due to damage to angular gyrus

Question 31

Two types of anomia?

Answer 31

Lexical semantic: Patient can name members of one semantic category but not another

Phonological anomia: Problems retrieving phonological info about a word (know what it means, TOT phenom)

Question 32

Garrett’s stages of syntactic planning explaining agrammatism?

Answer 32

trouble translating between levels (functional and positional)

• no sentence frame constructed
• no function words retrieved

Question 33

Garrett’s stages of syntactic planning explaining jargon aphasia?

Answer 33

can link to functional level to positional level but cant get the content words (in F level)

Question 34

Double dissociations between?

Answer 34

word finding + syntax production
syntax comprehension + syntax production
morpheme access + syntax production
retrieval of phonology + retrieval of content words