Brains!

1. Brains! And Language!

2. We are venturing into two fields: neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics • These fields are concerned with how we comprehend, learn, and produce languages using mental processes. Both fields use phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics to express, compare, and understand observations. Both fields make extensive use of anomalous cases: brains and minds that work differently due to disease, disability, injury, medically-altered states, and even unknown causes. • Neurolinguistics is concerned with the role that the brain plays in language. • Psycholinguistics is concerned with the role that language plays in the abstract concept of the mind. Introduction

3. The human brain has many differences to the animal brain, having the greatest proportion of cortex to brain mass of any animal, leading linguists to believe that is these particular differences that make language possible in humans. • Cerebral Cortex: highest level, gray wrinkly cap: memory, thought, language consciousness happens here. • Broca’s area: speech production • Wernicke’s area: language comprehension • Longitudinal fissure: separates right and left hemispheres • Corpus callosum: the small connection allowing communication between the hemispheres • Left hemisphere: right side body movements, most language skills, logic • Right hemisphere: left side body movements, “creativity,” some language skills such as metaphors and jokes But, all of these “areas” are merely estimations. Or are they? Your Brain!

4. Results in fluent speech production, but comprehension and coherency problems. Mild cases can have very normal syntax, but will often have problems with semantics. More severe cases can also have jargonaphasia, the random selection of phonemes that has the intonation and rhythm of language but contains few real words. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTdMV6cOZw Wernicke’s Aphasia

5. The reason we know these areas of the brain is that when they are damaged, a person manifests difficulty in certain language tasks. • Broca’s aphasia: damage to Broca’s area results in muteness or very halting speech that is described as dysprosody, alterations in intensity, in the timing of utterance segments, and in rhythm, cadency, and intonation of words. It is a syntactic, not motor deficit. (The person is not thinking of the right word and can’t get it out—they can’t think of the right word.) • Sarah Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aplTvEQ6ew • Later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi1yQhYpfFM Broca’s Aphasia

6. Acquired dyslexia (difficulty reading), and acquired dysgraphia (difficulty writing) are often associated with aphasia—there are several types, and they also serve to teach us about parts of the brain and the relationship between language and brain damage. • These severe disorders can teach us about more minor problems, and also unlock the secrets of a normally-functioning brain. • Knowing where are deficiencies are, and being able to pinpoint relationships between the brain and language may actually help those with learning disabilities, and brain damage through activities involving neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to make adaptations): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0td5aw1KXA Further research