BRAIN AND LANGUAGE
Understanding the complexities of human cognitive
abilities and especially the acquisition and use of language has been one of
the most intriguing topics in the field of linguistics. What relationship does
the brain and language share? Where is language located in the brain? These are
questions that both philosophers and linguists have faced. But thanks to
today’s technological advances focused on the neural field, researchers have
been able to study the connection between the brain and language in a way that
a few centuries ago was unimaginable.
I am Livia Gonzalez, I'm 23 years old and I'm a
student of the program of foreign languages at the UNAH, I like to imagine
stories in my mind and then write them also in the future I would like to study
another career to expand my knowledge.
Hello everyone! My name is Merlyn Susana
Reyes, I am 19 years old and I live in Tocoa, a small city in Colón. I am
currently in my third year of university and when I finish my career, I hope to
be able to study a master degree in translation and interpretation
English-Spanish. Meanwhile I thank God for every opportunity he has given me.
My name is Emilio Josué Vásquez, I´m 21 years old and I´m from Tegucigalpa Honduras. I study foreign languages at UNAH since 2018. I´m a big fan of comic books and I´m also a big fan of art in general, I like the painting, drawing, sculpture, theater, cinema, music, etc. but I just practice the painting and the drawing.
Hello, my name is Jeferson Pavon, I am from Nacaome,
Valle, I'm studying foreign languages at the UNAH, in my free time, I like
watching soccer matches, and listening to music. I hope that I will be an
English teacher in the future.
Images
The cerebral cortex (gray matter) is the outer layer of our brain that has a wrinkled appearance. It is divided into fields with specific functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and sensation, and controls higher functions such as speech, thinking, and memory. It is the organ that most distinguishes humans from other animals. Somewhere in this gray matter resides the grammar that represents our knowledge of language.
Broca’s aphasics (also often called agrammatic aphasics) may have difficulty understanding complex sentences in which comprehension depends exclusively on syntactic structure and where they cannot rely on their real-world knowledge.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique that uses a magnetic field and computer-generated radio waves to create detailed images of the organs and tissues in your body. MRI is a noninvasive way for your doctor to examine your organs, tissues and skeletal system. It produces high-resolution images of the inside of the body that help diagnose a variety of problems.
Neurolinguistics is the study of how language is
represented in the brain: that is, how and where our brains store our knowledge
of the language (or languages) that we speak, understand, read, and write, what
happens in our brains as we acquire that knowledge, and what happens as we use
it in our everyday lives.
Differences Between the Right and the Left Hemisphere
The left hemisphere is more verbal, analytical, and orderly than the right brain. It’s sometimes called the digital brain. It’s better at things like reading, writing, and computations. While the right hemisphere is more visual and intuitive. It’s sometimes referred to as the analog brain. It has a more creative and less organized way of thinking.
The Human Brain
The brain is the most complex organ of the body. The surface of the brain is the cortex, often called “gray matter,” consisting of billions of neurons (nerve cells) and glial cells (which support and protect the neurons). The cortex is the decision-making organ of the body. It is the organ that most distinguishes humans from other animals. Somewhere in this gray matter resides the grammar that represents our knowledge of language.
The brain is composed by:
v Right hemisphere: Controls the left side of the body.
v Left hemisphere: Controls the right side of the body.
v Corpus Callosum: Allows the two hemispheres of the brain to communicate with each other.
Sensory information from the right side of the body such as (e.g., right ear, right hand, right visual field) is received by the left hemisphere of the brain, and sensory input to the left side of the body is received by the right hemisphere, this function is called contralateral brain.
The Localization of Language
In the early nineteenth century, Franz Joseph Gall proposed the theory of localization, this idea consists those different human cognitive abilities and behaviors are localized in specific parts of the brain. At first Franz Gall thought that language was located directly under the eye, but later, Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke determined that language is lateralized to the left hemisphere. Our capacity to use language is located in the left hemisphere of the brain, specifically in two areas: Broca's area (associated with speech production and articulation) and Wernicke's area (associated with comprehension).
- Lateralization: is the term used to refer to the localization of function to one hemisphere of the brain.
Aphasia
The study of aphasia has been an important area of research in understanding the relationship between the brain and language. As we know, aphasia is the neurological term for any language disorder that results from acquired brain damage caused by disease or trauma.
Most aphasics do not show total language loss. Rather, different aspects of language are selectively impaired, and the kind of impairment is generally related to the location of the brain damage. Because of this damage-deficit correlation, research on patients with aphasia has provided a great deal of information about how language is organized in the brain.
k The Linguistic Characterization of Aphasic Syndromes
- Broca’s aphasia: (also often called agrammatic aphasics) It is characterized by labored speech and certain kinds of word-finding difficulties, but it is primarily a disorder that affects a person’s ability to form sentences with the rules of syntax, and where they cannot rely on their real-world knowledge.
- Wernicke’s aphasia: People with Wernicke’s aphasia produce fluent speech with good intonation, and they may largely adhere to the rules of syntax. However, their language is often semantically incoherent.
Split Brains
An extreme measure used to help people suffering from intractable epilepsy is a procedure of “splitting the brain” in which a surgeon severs the corpus callosum, the fibrous network that connects the two halves.
In people who have undergone split-brain surgery, the two hemispheres appear to be independent, and messages sent to the brain result in different responses, depending on which side receives the message. Experiments shown that the right brain does better than the left in pattern-matching tasks, in recognizing faces, and in spatial tasks. The left hemisphere is superior for language, rhythmic perception, temporal-order judgments, and arithmetic calculations.
Dichotic listening
Dichotic listening is an experimental technique that uses auditory signals to observe the behavior of the individual hemispheres of the human brain. Subjects hear two different sound signals simultaneously through earphones.
These experiments have shown that subjects are more frequently correct in reporting linguistic stimuli (language, words, nonsense syllables, and so on) delivered directly to the left side of the brain, but are more frequently correct in reporting nonverbal stimuli (musical chords, environmental sounds, and so on) delivered to the right side.
A. The brain is composed of a right and left cerebral hemisphere, joined by the corpus callosum, a network of more than 200 million fibers.
A. The cortex is the surface of the brain, often called “gray matter”, consisting of billions of neurons and glial cells.
A. Lateralization is the term used to refer to the localization of function to one hemisphere of the brain.
A. Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area.
A. Aphasia is the neurological term for any language disorder that results from acquired brain damage caused by disease or trauma.
A. Language is lateralized to the left hemisphere, and the left hemisphere appears to be the language hemisphere from infancy on.
A. The aphasic syndromes are Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia.
A. The two hemispheres appear to be independent, and messages sent to the brain result in different responses, depending on which side receives the message.
A. Dichotic listening is an experimental technique that uses auditory signals to observe the behavior of the individual hemispheres of the human brain.
A. The left side of the brain is specialized for language, and the right side is specialized for sounds.
Here you can find more information related to the topic.
1. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/aphasia
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279302/
4. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324529#5.-How-language-changes-our-perception
5. https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/language-and-brain
Reflection by Merlyn Reyes
During the realization of the project there were many important aspects involved, aspects that it is impossible to leave aside. I will begin by mentioning what I manage to rescue from the project, that is to say what I learned. One of the things that I enjoyed doing this project the most was the ability to learn about the complex and important functions that our brain performs, the way in which the two hemispheres that made up the brain, right and left work through a contralateral function, that is, each hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body. Likewise, the importance of how the investigations carried out on the brain has contributed to identify where language is located in the brain and what is the relationship between both. Undoubtedly, they have been key pieces.
As for what I liked about the project there are two aspects that I highlight, the first was to be able to do this work as a group, because it stimulates our creativity, increases motivation and decreases stress levels, allowing us to do a much better job than expected, as long as the ideas of each member of the group have been taken into account. The second was to make a work made up of all the didactic strategies learned throughout the whole term, since we had previously experienced what it was to make a semantic map, a PowerPoint presentation, a video, etc. And combining all of these works into a whole project was impressively wonderful. However, there was one aspect I did not like about this project. Undoubtedly doing this project in a face-to-face manner would have been a very nice experience, share in front of our classmates every idea would have given a total change to the project, but it is something that we cannot change because we are still facing a pandemic.
Referring to changes, the only one would be to be able to share each of our points of view on the topic assigned to our classmates and also with Mrs. Patricia, so that we can know each other’s doubts and do everything possible to clarify them. This project was very important and of great benefit to us, so I would like to finish this reflection by giving a suggestion, it will be only one because everything seemed to be very well organized and no problem presented at the time of working on this project. My only suggestion would be that each group choose the site they consider best to do their blog, as for many blogspot.com. is a site that had not been used before and therefore it was a bit complex to adapt to it.
Reflection by Emilio Nuñez
We worked with the Chapter 10: Brain and language, I think that it is a very interesting topic, I never asked before which part of the brain allows us to talk and use correctly all the rules of speech and writing. In addition, the brain is, probably, the most complex organ of the body, nowadays there are a lot of things that we don’t know about it; everything about the brain has been so fascinating to me, and in this case, it was even more fascinating because involves the language development on the brain.
Reflection by Livia González
I believe that as students we have a duty to do our assignments to be able to pass a class but despite those things we must recognize that work like this is what helps us better understand a topic, takes us to the limit of our thinking and creativity, With each detail that it takes we learn more, personally this topic interested me a lot because it talks about the brain and language, which many times we think is something simple that we speak and form words because it is our nature but we have no idea what is happening by our brain when forming a word, a sentence, producing it and finally speaking it, we have a powerful brain that we often underestimate because we do not believe we are capable.
Something very important that I learned and that I did not know is that the most frontal part is in charge of executive control, in this case, Broca's area controls the production of language.
But it is not only about the specialization of the brain, but about how those areas communicate with each other. In the case of language, this function is fulfilled by the Arched Fascicle that guides the information between the Broca and Wernicke areas. For this reason, in Broca's Aphasia the production of language is impaired, understanding in Wernicke's Aphasia and the Arch Fasciculus in Conduction Aphasia.
It seemed very important to know this about how language arias are classified in our brain, concepts that I had no idea.
The suggestions I would give for this project is that we can use our creativity more and not only be what the teacher asks if not, that a little more creativity be given, for example the design and be able to improve it.
Equally, it is a great opportunity for us as students to learn more and expand our knowledge.
References
Explains, D. (2020, Enero 14). The
Brain and Language. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watchapp=desktop&v=zj0yud4wv74&ab_channel=ProfessorDaveExplains
FlintRehab. (11 de Enero de 2011). Cerebral Cortex Damage: Definition, Symptoms, and Recovery. Obtenido de https://www.flintrehab.com/cerebral-cortex-damage/
Gaia Vince, M. (2016, Agosto 16). How
language is processed by your brain. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/16/health/language-in-the-human-brain/index.html
Hugdahl, K. (2009). Dichotic Listening.
Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/dichotic-listening
Memory, T. H. (25 de Noviembre de 2020). Cerebral Cortex. Obtenido de https://human-memory.net/cerebral-cortex/#Conclusion
UCSF. (2016, Febrero 08). Speech & Language. Retrieved from https://memory.ucsf.edu/symptoms/speech-language
Weatherspoon, D. (07 de
Marzo de 2019). Left Brain vs. Right Brain: What Does This Mean for Me? Obtenido de
https://www.healthline.com/health/left-brain-vs-right-brain
