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LANGUAGES AND THE BRAIN

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Created on September 9, 2020

a lesson for the linguistics class

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language and the brain

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Boroditsky, L. (04 Oct 2019) Language and the brain. Science, Vol. 366, Issue 6461, pp. 13, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz6490

What is Neurolinguistics?

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Language and the brain

NEUROLINGUISTICS

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Menn, L. (n/d) Neurolinguistics. Linguistic Society of America. Available: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/neurolinguistics#:~:text=Neurolinguistics%20is%20the%20study%20of,it%20in%20our%20everyday%20lives

BROCCA AND WERNIKE

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Paul Broca and Tan’s brain

The process of identifying the parts of the brain that are involved in language began in 1861, when Paul Broca, a French neurosurgeon, examined the brain of a recently deceased patient who had had an unusual disorder. Though he had been able to understand spoken language and did not have any motor impairments of the mouth or tongue that might have affected his ability to speak, he could neither speak a complete sentence nor express his thoughts in writing. The only articulate sound he could make was the syllable “tan”, which had come to be used as his name.

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Wernicke

Ten years later, Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist, discovered another part of the brain, this one involved in understanding language, in the posterior portion of the left temporal lobe. People who had a lesion at this location could speak, but their speech was often incoherent and made no sense.

Wernicke's observations have been confirmed many times since. Neuroscientists now agree that running around the lateral sulcus (also known as the fissure of Sylvius) in the left hemisphere of the brain, there is a sort of neural loop that is involved both in understanding and in producing spoken language. At the frontal end of this loop lies Broca's area, which is usually associated with the production of language, or language outputs . At the other end (more specifically, in the superior posterior temporal lobe), lies Wernicke's area, which is associated with the processing of words that we hear being spoken, or language inputs. Broca's area and Wernicke's area are connected by a large bundle of nerve fibres called the arcuate fasciculus.

Dubuc, B. (2002) BROCA’S AREA , WERNICKE’S AREA, AND OTHER LANGUAGE-PROCESSING AREAS IN THE BRAIN. The brain. Retrieved from https://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_10/d_10_cr/d_10_cr_lan/d_10_cr_lan.html

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