Cog Neuro Week 10 - Neuropsychology of Language

what are the 5 components that make up a language? and what do they mean?

phonological skills: sounds; syllables and rhymes

syntax: word order and grammar rules

morphological skills: meaning of word forms and parts

pragmatics: social rules and communication

semantics: understanding the meaning of words and phrases

which side of the brain is more dominant for language?

left

Wada Test and what technique do we use now?

used for ppl w epilepsy. putting half the brain to sleep by putting a drug on the ipsilateral carotid artery to effect that side of the brain. Now use fMRI to see which side of the brain lights up when asked about language

what’s the relationship between handedness and language

contralateral relationship

• most common pattern is having left language processing and right handedness

• not everybody though 

• people who process language on the right side are more likely to be left handed compared to right handed 

• still best guess regardless of handedness is to assume language is on the left side

broca’s area

output of language (speaking and sign language)

Wernike’s area

input of language and understanding

louis victor leborgne

only produce one word “tan”

damage of left frontal lobe (broca’s aphasia)

lazare lelong

treated for dementia

could only produce 5 distinct utterances 

damage of left frontal lobe (broca’s aphasia)

are ppl with broca’s aphasia know they are not speaking fluently?

yes

symptoms of broca’s aphasia (fluency impairments)

Effortful, slow and [often] frustrating

• dramatic stutter 

Impaired prosody

• not having tone

• cant emphasize 

Agrammatism (content > function words)

• resembles how kids speak when learning

Prevalence of paraphasias

• saying the wrong thing

• might use the wrong language sounds (scoon vs spoon)

comprehension mostly intact

complex sytax may be problematic, but they typically understand

can people damage their Broca’s area learn sign language to make up for language loss?

not really

melodic intonation therapy

singing may help you produce more fluent language because it is leaning on the right hemisphere because it is more musical 

can people with broca’s aphasia write? 

if there is no motor impairment then it can be helpful to say what they need to say

do people with broca’s aphasia and people with studders use the same area?

stuttering has many different causes so no.

insula

if it is damaged, we develop apraxia of speech: identifying the sounds you need to say a certain word. NOT associated with broca’s area

so important, it was discussed to be a third lobe of the brain

Wernike’s aphasia

Fluency features

Can produce a stream of continuous utterances

Prosody intact

• can produce words just don’t make sense 

• have tone and diction

Content of message becomes garbled (“word salad”)

Prevalence of paraphasias

• may be saying words that are not even words

Comprehension impaired

not aware they have a problem

cannot read

no gestures, but can understand other peoples gestures

cannot understand language

music does not really help because they don’t understand what the motivation for the music is

in primary auditory process and the ventral stream for memory 

arculate fasciculus

white matter arch that connects broca’s area and wernike’s area 

cannot repeat speech because you can understand what they say but not send information that goes directly to the wernike’s area to the broca’s area

Global aphasia

damage to the base of the middle cerebral artery causes damage to all parts of that hemisphere of the brain

• cannot speak, cannot understand, cannot read or write

• can recover if you are young and healthy 

dual rote model of reading

grapheme-phoneme conversion: linking letter to sound

semantic lexicon: semantic dictionary when you cannot sound out words just to memorize how they’re spelt

in what languages is dyslexia more common?

in languages that are opaque: like english, languages that dont look like theyre spelt

VWFA: visual word form area

whenever you see a word you can pronounce or that you know

located in the left fusiform area

hemianopia

blindspot

blindness of half of the visual field

hemianopic alexics

can read individual words OK, but struggle with longer strings

damage to different area than those with pure alexics

pure alexics

regardless of any hemianopic - struggle to read even single word damage of the visual word form area (VWFA)

what part of the brain is not active when someone has dyslexia?

the VWFA

what happens if you damage the RH for language?

cannot understand sarcasm, irony, or ability to express thing pragmatically 

role of RH and discourse processing

helps of synthesize information so that you can summarize things

reading comprehension: more activation in the right hemisphere 

RH lesions and social situations

they take the images or social situation literally rather than inferring what’s going on not literally.