Language

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Chapter 13

• Language

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Paul Broca and Tan

• In 1861, Broca examined a patient nicknamed
  Tan, after the syllable he said most often.
• The area of damage in Tans case is now known as
  Brocas area.

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• Speech Production and Comprehension
• Aphasia
• Difficulty in producing or comprehending speech
• Caused by brain damage
• Not produced by deafness of a simple motor deficit

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Important Areas for Language
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• Speech Production
• Brocas area
• A region of frontal cortex, located just rostral
  to the base of the left primary motor cortex,
  that is necessary for speech production.
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• Speech Production
• Brocas aphasia (production aphasia)
• Speech of others understood, but
• Their own speech is slow, labored, non-fluent
• Characterized by
• difficulty in articulation
• anomia
• agrammatism

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• Speech Production
• Function word
• Content word

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• Memory of Words Anomic aphasia
• Anomic aphasia
• Circumlocution

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• Speech Comprehension
• Wernickes area
• A region of auditory association cortex on the
  left temporal lobe of humans, which is important
  in the comprehension of words and the production
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• Wernickes aphasia
• A form of aphasia characterized by poor speech
  comprehension and fluent but meaningless speech.

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Brocas and Wernickes Aphasia

• Damage to Wernickes area.
• Speech is fluent, but meaningless.
• Comprehension is very poor.
• Sound substitutions are common.
• Repetition is poor.

• Damage to Brocas area.
• Speech is not fluent.
• Comprehension is affected, but good.
• Repetition is very poor.

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Conduction Aphasia

• Damage to arcuate fasciculus.
• Speech production is good.
• Comprehension is good.
• Sound substitutions are common.
• Repetition is poor.

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Global Aphasia

• Damage to Brocas area, Wernickes area and the
  arcuate fasciculus.
• Abilities to speak, comprehend and repeat are
  impaired.

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Transcortical Aphasia

• Transcortical motor aphasia
• Difficulty producing speech.
• Good comprehension and repetition.
• Transcortical sensory aphasia
• Speech production and repetition are good.
• Comprehension is poor.

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The Wernicke-Geschwind Model of Aphasia
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Alexia

• Patients with alexia are unable to read or to
  point to words and letters on command.
• Patients may write, but are unable to read what
  was written.
• Ability to recognize words spelled out loud is
  retained.
• Most cases result from damage to the left
  occipital cortex and the corpus callosum.

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Agraphia

• Damage to motor areas responsible for fine
  movements, or
• Inability to spell words
• In phonological agraphia, patients cant sound
  out words.
• cant sound out nonsense words or new words
• can still write familiar words using visual
  imagery
• In orthographic agraphia, patients cant form
  visual images of words to be spelled, but can
  spell phonetically.

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Correlates of Dyslexia

• Less asymmetry in planum temporale
• Differences in the corpus callosum
• Prenatal testosterone and lateralization
• Dyslexia is more common among those who are
  left-handed or ambidextrous
• Dyslexia is more common among males
• Problems with phonological awareness, spatial
  relations, processing rapidly presented stimuli

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Brain Activation During Reading

• Reader with dyslexia shows less activation of
  Wernickes area and the angular gyrus and more
  activation of Brocas area.

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Stuttering

• 1 of the population stutters.
• Stuttering may involve repetition or prolonging
  of speech sounds.
• 75 of stuttering people are male.
• Stuttering may be genetic.
• People who stutter may lateralize language to the
  right hemisphere they show no impairments while
  singing.
• Treatments include reducing the rate of speech,
  reducing stress and providing auditory feedback.

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Defining Intelligence

• Sternberg and Salter (1982) our ability to
  engage in goal-directed adaptive behavior.
• A more cynical view intelligence is what
  intelligence tests measure.

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Assessment of Intelligence

• Intelligence testing arose out of compulsory
  education laws.
• Binet and Simon proposed that bright children
  would act more like older children.
• Terman adapted Binet and Simons test for
  Americans.
• Current tests have abandoned the mental age
  concept.

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General vs. Specific Abilities

• Charles Spearman suggested that all intelligence
  arises from a single general intelligence (g)
  factor.
• Howard Gardner proposed that we have multiple,
  independent types of intelligence.
• Savant behaviors
• Williams syndrome low intelligence, but highly
  verbal

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The Role of Heredity in Intelligence

• Highly debated topic.
• 6080 of variation in intelligence may be due to
  heredity.
• Identical twins show .95 correlation in gray
  matter volume.
• Intelligence genes have been elusive.

Thompson et al., 2001
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Einsteins Brain

• Zaidel (2001)
• Left hippocampal neurons were much larger than
  right hippocampal neurons.
• This asymmetry was not found in control subjects
  with normal intelligence.
• Witelson et al. (1999) Einsteins parietal lobe
  was about 15 larger than normal.