Language and the brain

• The study of relationship between Language and brain.

• The field of study dates back to the nineteenth century, based on the incident in September 1848 near Cavendish, Vermont.

• Mr. Gage suffered the type of injury from which, it was assumed, no one could recover.

• However, a month later, he was up and about, with no apparent damage to his senses or speech.

Neurolinguistics

A construction foreman, Phineas P. Gage was at work, some gunpowder accidentally exploded and sent a three and a half foot long tamping rod up through his upper left cheek and out from the top of his forehead.

• This medical marvel clearly denotes that while language may be situated in the brain, it clearly is not situated right at the front.

Parts of the brain

The most important parts are in areas above the left ear.

Paul broca

▪ This part is described as the anterior speech cortex or more usually as the broca's area. Paul Broca study concluded that damage to this part of the brain was related to extreme difficulty in producing speech.▪ Broca's area is crucially involved in the production of speech.

Broca’s area

Carl Wernicke

This part is known as the ‘'posterior speech cortex,‘’ or most commonly known as ‘’Wernicke's area.‘’ As claimed by Carl Wernicke, this part of the brain was found among patients who were having difficulties in speech comprehension, hence confirming that this part of the brain is crucially involved in the understanding of speech.

Wernicker’s area

The Motor Cortex And The Arcuate Fasciculus

▪ Motor Cortex is found close to Broca's area.▪ Controls movement of facial muscles (jaws, tongue and larynx)▪ Penfield and Roberts (1959) found that by applying small amounts of electrical current to specific areas of the brain, they could identify those areas where the electrical stimulation would interfere with normal speech production.

• Tip of the tongue phenomenon is the subjective feeling that people have of being confident that they know the target word for which they are searching, yet they cannot recall this word.

• They are somewhat able to recall words of similar sounds and meaning, but never the actual word they are seeking. 

 • TOT is an experience with memory recollection

involving difficulty retrieving a well-known word or familiar name. Tip of the tongue phenomenon is one kind of metacognition.

 

Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon

• Metacognition is the knowledge and thoughts about one's own cognitive processes, as well as control of those cognitive processes. 

• Another term related to this phenomenon is the feeling of knowing, which is the prediction about whether you could correctly recognize the correct answer to a question. 

• This effect is more conscious meaning one thoughtfully assesses whether one could recognize the answer if one was given several options.

How does this phenomenon happen?• The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is

usually an involuntary effect.•   Most people have experienced this

phenomenon many times in their life. • The most common reason for why this

phenomenon occurs is a retrieval process gone awry.

•   When one experiences this phenomenon it appears that one is having a breakdown in an intermediate stage of lexical retrieval.

•   Lexical retrieval is a search for a desired word in a human's memory storage.

Slips of the Tongue• Slips of the tongue are speech errors in which intended

utterances are rearranged between other words or sounds.

• There are three types of slip-of-the-tongue errors.

• These types include sound errors, morpheme errors, and word errors.

• A sound error occurs when the sounds in words close by are exchanged.

• For example, instead of saying "flower pot," one says "power flot." A morpheme error occurs when morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful units in language, are switched in words close by.

• For example, instead of saying "self-destruct instruction," one says, "self-instruct destruction." Word errors occur when actual words are rearranged.

• For example instead of saying, "reading a book to my dog," one says, "reading a dog to my book." 

    

• Slips of the tongue can be either conscious or unconscious.

• According to Sigmund Freud, slips of the tongue reveal the thoughts and desires of the unconscious mind.

• These slips of the tongue are called Freudian slips, or parapraxes.

Slips of the Ear

• An error of misperception in listening : mistaking a word or phrase for a similar-sounding word or phrase in speech or conversation.

 • Slips of the ear provide researchers with

insights into the ways in which words are recognized in connected speech.

Aphasia

Aphasia : Aphasia from ancient Greek "speechlessness“ is the disturbance in

formulation and comprehension of language.

Signs and symptoms• inability to comprehend language• inability to pronounce, not due to muscle

paralysis or weakness• inability to speak spontaneously• inability to form words• inability to name objects• poor enunciation• excessive creation and use of personal 

neologisms• inability to repeat a phrase• persistent repetition of phrases

• incomplete sentences• inability to read• inability to write• limited verbal output• difficulty in naming• Speech disorder

Broca’S Aphasia

Inability to speak, or to produce spontaneous speech, as a result of an injury to the area of the

brain that produces language.

This area is known as Broca's area.

Although people with Broca's aphasia cannot speak, they can understand others when they speak.

Wernicke’ s Aphasia

Inability to understand spoken language due to injury to the area of the brain that helps

us carry out this task.

This area is known as Wernicke's area.

People who have Wernicke’s Aphasia, cannot understand anything , but speak

incoherently or with their own words.

  This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write. 

Aphasia is usually linked to brain damage, most commonly by stroke.

The brain damage which links aphasia can also cause further brain diseases such as cancer, epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease. 

ACUTE APHASIA

This aphasia type is chronic one. Acute aphasia disorders usually develop quickly

as a result of head injury or stroke, and progressive forms of aphasia develop slowly from a brain tumor, infection, or dementia.

The area and extent of brain damage or atrophy will determine the type of aphasia and its symptoms.

Aphasia types include expressive aphasia, 

receptive aphasia, conduction aphasia, anomic aphasia, global aphasia,primary progressive aphasias and many others.

Types of aphasia

1. Expressive Aphasia : Expressive Aphasia (non-fluent aphasia), is characterized by the loss of the ability to produce language (spoken or written). 

Expressive aphasia differs from dysarthria,

which is typified by a patient's inability to properly move the muscles of the tongue and mouth to produce speech. Expressive aphasia contrasts with receptive aphasia.

2. Receptive Aphasia, also known as Wernicke’s aphasia, fluent aphasia, or sensory aphasia, is a type of aphasia traditionally associated with neurological damage to Wernicke’s area in the brain.

People with receptive aphasia can speak with

normal grammar, syntax, rate, intonation, and stress, but they are unable to understand language in its written or spoken form.

3. Conduction Aphasia : Conduction aphasia, also called associative aphasia, is a relatively rare form of aphasia. An acquired language disorder, it is characterized by intact auditory comprehension, fluent (yet paraphasic) speech production, but poor speech repetition.

They are fully capable of understanding what they are hearing but they will have difficulty repeating what was actually said.

They will also be aware of their errors, and will show significant difficulty correcting them.

Conduction aphasia usually is the result of

damage to the left brain hemisphere, such as by stroke.

4.Anomic Aphasia, also known as dysnomia, nominal aphasia, and amnesic aphasia; is a severe problem with recalling words or names.

Anomic aphasia (anomia) is a type of aphasia characterized by problems recalling words or names.

 patients are able to speak with correct grammar; the

main problem is finding the appropriate word to identify an object or person.

5.Global Aphasia : Global aphasia is total reduction of all aspects of spoken and written language.

It involves a "left side blowout" which

includes Broca's area, Wernicke's area and the Arcuate fasciculus.

6.Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) : A speech disorder seen with certain degenerative brain diseases, consisting of deterioration of speech and language ability over a period of years without significant loss of memory or ability to understand language.

TREATMENT OF APHASIA• Sometimes, people who have aphasia can be

treated in hospital.

• This disease is treated by a speech therapist.

• In this process , therapists teach patients basic information like a child.

Dichotic listening test

• Dichotic Listening is a psychological test commonly used to investigate 

selective attention within the auditory system and is a subtopic of 

cognitive psychology and neuroscience. 

In other words, Dichotic listening is a

situation in which people hear different kind of sounds from each ear.

The critical period In general, a critical period is a limited time in

which an event can occur, usually to result in some kind of transformation.

It is compulsory for the development of a particular skill.

If the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus during this "critical period", it may be difficult, ultimately less successful, or even impossible, to develop some functions later in life.

This is fundamentally different than the sensitive period, which is a more extended period of time during development when an individual is more receptive to specific types of environmental stimuli, usually because nervous system development is especially sensitive to certain sensory stimuli. This makes the individual more predisposed to learning.

• The critical period for the development of a human child's binocular vision is thought to be between three and eight months, with sensitivity to damage extending up to at least three years of age.

• Further critical periods have been identified for the development of hearing and the vestibular system.

There is a critical period to learn language for human being.

It is related to especially learning and language acquisition.

Lateralization (One Sidedness) :

A person uses his left hemisphere for language in a particular period in his life. This is described as Lateralization or One sidedness.

If a person does not expose his language in this period, he will not acquire that language.

• Even if that person tries to learn his language later, he cannot learn this language very well.

PREPARED BY

MERVE TABAK ESRA PAYZA

ŞÜKRAN KAYAGAMZE ŞİMŞEK