LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN.

The biological side of language is the subject of increasing research, and advances are possible because of the growing, sophistication of available experimental techniques and equipment. It is somewhat ironic that until recently, progress in our understanding of brain functions has come not from the study of normal individuals but largely from the study of individuals with injured brains. Whenever disease of injury affects the left side of the brain, some aspect of the ability to perceive, progress, or produce language may be disturbed. Individuals with such brain disease or injury are said to be aphasic, and their brain disturbances can give us insight into how human brain carries out its language-related tasks. Aphasia is abroad term encompassing numerous syndromes of communicative impairment, some aphasic labor to speak a single word, whereas athers effortlessly produce long but meaningless utterances. By studying the affect of brain damage on speech and comprehension, researchers have obtained invaluable clues to the organization of speech and language in the human nervous system. Neurolinguists are interested in the correlation between brain damage and speech and language deficits. These language and brain specialists believe that the study of language form use will reveal principle of brain function, may support or refute specific linguistic theories.

A Left Hemisphere Phenomenon. For over century scholars have debated the question of speech and language localization within the brain. In the 1860s, scientists known as localizationists speculated that the functioning of specific regions in the brain was responsible for language. Antilocalizationists argued that speech in language consequence of the brain functioning as a whole. In 1861, Paul Broca, French surgeon and anatomist, described to the Socite d Anthropologie in paris a patient who in life had had extreme difficulty in producing speech. Later, at autopsy, the patient was found to have damage in the posterior inferior part of the frontal lobe in the left cerebral hemisphere, now known as Brocas area. In 1865, Broca extended his claim about speech localization by reporting that damage to sites in the left cerebral hemisphere produced apahasia, whereas were the

destruction of corresponding sites in the right hemisphere left linguistic capacities intact, either had trouble talking or uttered a vowellike cry. However, no patient ever produced an intelligible word as result of electrical stimulation. Through the cooperation of courageous patients, who remained conscious during surgery, Penfield and Roberts were able to conclude that three areas the left hemispheres are vital to speech and language. As evidence accumulated verifying left cerebral speech dominance, researchers thought to discover whether the left hemisphere speech areas were structurally unique. Geschwind and Levitsky were the first to report that a region in the left temporal lobe was larger than the same area on the right in 65 percent of the brains they studied. This area, called the planum temporal. Today scientist agree that specific neuroanatomic structures, generally of the left hemisphere, are vital for speech and language, but debate continues as to which structures are committed to the various linguistic capacities.

The Nervous System. the central and peripheral nervous system form an intricate communication network through which the behavior of the body is governed. This brain and opinal cord constitutes the central nervous system (CNS) and is linked to the peripheral nervous system by bundles of nerve fibers that extend to all parts of the body. Impulses received from peripheral receptors are sorted, interpreted, and responded to by the CNS. The basic cellular unit of the nervous system is the neuron, of which there are estimated 12 billion. Each neuron is structurally distinct and composed of (1) a cell body, (2) receptors known as dendrites, and (3) a conductive mechanism, or axon. The dendrites recive input other neurons and transmit away from the cell body.

Levels of the central Nervous System. The central nervous system is hierarchically, bigger structures being more complex than lower ones. At the lowest level is the spinal cord, which acts as a cable through which streams of neuronal messages between the body and the brain are transmitted. Bove the spinal cord is the brain stem the regulator of such things as breathing, muscle tone, posture sleep, and body temperature. Lower nervous

system structures, such as the spinal cord and lower brain stem, are primarily reflexive and controlled by higher centers. At the highest level of the nervous system are cerebral hemispheres responsible for voluntary activity.

The Cerebral Cortex: General Characteristics. In outward opperance the two cerebral hemispheres are roughly similar, being composed of convulations, called gyri, and depression of fissures, known as sulci. Certain gyri and sulci serve as landmarks helping to differentiate the boundaries of the four lobes of each hemisphere. The fissure of sylvius separates the frontal lobe from the temporal; the fissure of Rolando separates the frontal lobe from parietal. No fissure separates the parietal and occipital lobes; these two lobes can be distinguished only by microscopic examination of cell structures.

Cortical Conduction. The bulk of the cerebral hemispheres, beneath the outer layer of gray matter, is composed of three basic types of nerve fiber, tracts that form a neural communication network of astonishing complexity. Association nerve fibers connect different portions of the same hemisphere. Projection fibers connect the cortex with lower portions of the brain and spinal cord, and transverse fibers interconnect the cerebral hemispheres. Of particular importance to speech and language function is the massive transverse fiber tract called the corpus callosum. By means of the corpus callosum the two hemispheres are able to communicate with each other in the form of electrical impulses. Eccles (1972) estimated that if one assumes that each of the approximately 200 million nerve fibers constituting the corpus callosum has a average firing capacity of 20 impulses per second, then the corpus callosum can carry the astronomical number 4 billion impulses per second.

HOW DOES THE BRIAN ENCODE ANDD DECODE SPEECH AND LANGUAGE?. Speech and Language: A Cortical and Subcortical System. What the silence of the isolate right hemisphere has dramatized is that speech is not solely a cortical function. Subcortical fiber tracts as well as gray matter ares deep within the bgrain particularly the thalamus also participate in speech and language. Tha thalamus can be conceived of as a great relay station, receiving nerve fiber projections from the cortex and lower nervous system structures and raditing fibers to all parts of the cortex. The speculated that tha thalamus may provide an interaction between language and memory mechanisms.

Evidence from Dicthotic Research. By means of a research technique called dichotic listening, we can analyze the characteristic of incoming stimuli processed by the individual hemispheres. During a dichotic listening task two different stimuli are presented simultaneously, through earphones, to the left and righ ears. For example, the right ear may be given the word base and the lef ear ball. The right ear advance (REA) was originally thought to exist only for linguistically meaningful stimuli, but the same advantage has been found for nonsense syllables, speech played backewars, consonant- vowel syllables, and even small units of speech such as fricatives. The REA associated with Morse code stimuli suggest that the left hemisphere may dominant for more than than the phonetic structure of language. For example, several investigators have notaed that the ability to perform fine judgments o temporal order is a function of the left hemisphere aphasics perform poorly, compared with controls and subject with right hemispheres damage. On nonlinguistic tasks requiring temporal order judgments.

Complementary Specialization of the Central Hemispheres. For some time the view prevailed that the left hemisphere was superior, overall, to the right; but this misconception has recently been correct. The research techniques providing insight into speech and language function have unveiled functions for which the right hemisphere is dominant particularly those functions requiring spatial ability. Injury to the right hemisphere can result in visuospatial impairment. An affected individual may have trouble getting from one place to another, drawing objects assembling puzzles, or recognizing faces.

Do the Hemispheres Equally Support the Development of Speech and Language?

Although speech and language function can be tajen over by the right hemisphere if necessary, there is evidence that the right hemisphere does not have the same potential for speech and language specialization as the left has. Dennis and Whitaker (1976) monitored the development of three children in whom one hemisphere of the brain was surgically removed during infancy to arrest seizures associated with Sturge-Weber-Dimitri syndrome.

Table. IQ score of children in the Dennis and Whitaker study (1976)

IQ Test Verbal Performance Full scale

MW 96 92 93

SM 94 87 90

CA 91 108 99

ARE THE COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE NEUROANATOMOCALLY DISTINCT?

Within the left hemisphere there is uniform nor equal representation of linguistic function. Damage to a s