Darkthorn’s Blog

- language is a creative process using sounds, symbols and rules to create meanings

- language is innate, and has a specific development period (<6-7 years)

- animal sounds are steriotyped and not unique

- monkeys do not use cortical regions for communication, use brain stem

- critical period is bird song development, otherwise the sounds produced are meaningless

- language areas usually located in left hemisphere

- supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, Wernike’s area, Broca’s area

- deficits called aphasias

- paraphrasia – substitutions of a different word

- nonfluent speech – talking with effort (affected Broca’s area)

- agraphia – impairment in writing

- alexia – impairment in understanding written words

- Broca’s area – understand language, but can’t form or organise own sentances

- Wernike’s area – trouble understanding, but can talk

- conduction – can understand and speak well, but can’t repeat of make conversation (destruction of axons)

Classic Connectional Model

1. Sound is analysed in primary auditory cortex
2. Structure and meaning deoded by Wernike’s area
3. Motor plan for articulation is formed in Broca’s area
4. Primary motor cortex activates appropriate muscles

Left hemisphere dominant for language in right handed people.

Left handed people have less dominance.

If split brain occurs, the two hemispheres cannot determine what occurred in the other, so informtion in the right hemisphere cannot be processed into words.

Right hemisphere, involved in analysis and production of intonation and emotional content. It is used for understanding the pragmatics of language (such as interpreting jokes) in different contexts.