Chapter 15

Split Brain Individual

An individual whose corpus callosum has been severed, halting communication between the right and left hemispheres

Wada Test

Can confirm involvement of hemispheres in language by temporarily shutting down

Auditory areas of the right hemispheres

Play a major role in perception of music, musical perception is impaired by damage to the right hemisphere, and music activates the right hemisphere more than the left

Auditory areas of the left hemispheres

play a major role in speech and understand speech

Fusiform Gyrus

A region on the inferior surface of the cortex associated with recognition of faces, is damaged in cases of prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia

The inability to recognize faces

Aphasia

Impairment in language ability to varying degrees, caused by brain injury, especially to the left hemisphere

Nonfluent (Brocas) Aphasia

Difficulty with producing speech, but not with comprehension

Fluent (Wernickes) Aphasia

Fluent, meaningless speech accompanied by many paraphasias and minimal language comprehension; impaired ability to repeat words or phrases; and may also include anomia, word deafness and or word blindness

Global Aphasia

Total loss of the ability to understand or produce language

Conduction Aphasia

An impairment in the repetition of words and sentences

Phonemes

Basic speech sounds

Morphemes

simple units of meaning; assembled into words with meaning; semantics

Syntax (grammer)

Words are assembled into meaningful strings

Critical Period (Sensitive period)

Language development depends on exposure during

Dyslexia

Mild to severe difficulty with reading attributed to brain impairment

Alexia

Sudden dyslexia after brain damage, usually to the left hemisphere

Deep Dyslexia

Patients read one word as another, related word

Surface Dyslexia

Patients are restricted to the regular sound of letters

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)

Dementia that results from too many blows to the head and is characterized by excess tau protein within neurons, which interferes with their function

Astereognosis

The inability to recognize objects by touching and feeling them

Arcuate Fasciculus

A fiber tract classically viewed as a connection between Wernicke’s speech area and Brocas speech area. Decodes sounds and transmits information