The Interplay of Language, Cognition and the Brain: Insights from Neurolinguistics and Cognitive Linguistics (original) (raw)
Related papers
Language and Brain: What is Up? What is Coming Up?
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology (Neuropsychology, Development and Cognition: Section A), 2001
The classical aphasiological model of brain/language relationships is nowadays complemented by independent results from functional neuroimaging studies using techniques such as Positron Emission Tomography, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or Event-Related Electro-Encephalography and Magneto-Encephalography mapping. Although brain mapping of language is still hampered by many methodological pitfalls, these methods now appear reliable and provide a renewed description of the temporal spatial dynamics of neural ensembles subserving language functions. Moreover, neuroimaging techniques should also shed a new light on remaining difficult issues such as neural and functional plasticity in developmental or post-lesional contexts.
One of the most challenging issues related to human language is understanding how it is organized and processed in the brain. Such study is described under the broad rubric of the neurobiology of language and defines the field ofneurolinguistics. The domain of inquiry has largely focused on investigations of aphasic patients, exploring the clinical and behavioral manifestations of their disorder and the accompanying lesion localization. These "experiments in nature" provide the traditional approach to the study of language/brain relations, and without question, they have provided, the major insights to date. Nevertheless, in more recent years, the increased sophistication of electrophysiological and metabolic techniques has provided a new and exciting approach to the study of the neurobiology of language. These latter studies allow investigation of neural activity in normal subjects in addition to the study of brain-damaged patients. Taken together, these three approaches: clinical/lesion investigations using imaging techniques such as computerized axial tomography (CAT scan) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); electrophysiological studies using evoked related potentials (ERP); and metabolic techniques using positron emission tomography (PET), provide converging data on the nature of the representation of language, the processes involved in language use, and ultimately its underlying neural organization.
Rethinking the neurological basis of language
Lingua, 2005
Functional neuroimaging, within 10 years, has produced evidence which leads us to question a number of the standard assumptions about the areas which are necessary and sufficient for language processing. Although neuroimaging evidence has corroborated much neuropsychological data, it forces a revision of a number of the standard interpretations of those data and some traditionally accepted notions must be totally discarded. We will provide an overview of some issues which have arisen in these years, giving examples from a number of laboratories and illustrating with experiments of our own. The circumstances under which the left posterior temporal lobe (Wernicke's area) and the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area) are activated are reviewed, and several views of how they contribute to language processing are considered in the light of this evidence. Further evidence for the contribution of a number of other areas to language comprehension are reviewed, including the anterior temporal lobe, the cerebellum, the left superior median frontal lobe, the anterior insula and the left inferior temporal occipital junction. Further we discuss some of the conditions under which the right hemisphere contributes to language processing. We will conclude by discussing the implications of this research for the concept of modularity in the sense of Fodor [Modularity of Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1983].
2014
This paper provides an update on a decade of neuroimaging studies (using electroencephalography, EEG, and magnetoencephalography, MEG) that have focused on linguistic processing in patients with aphasia. The goal of this paper is to shed light on the challenges and usefulness in using such techniques for the study of aphasia. We review study objectives, techniques and results, and highlight the linguistic structures that have been studied. The first part defines the challenges and ∗ E-mail: marie.pourquie@umontreal.ca. † E-mail:phaedra.royle@umontreal.ca. Marie Pourquié and Phaedra Royle 2 usefulness of EEG and MEG techniques for aphasiology; the second reports the procedures, targets and main results of reviewed studies; the last section addresses the following issues: What does neuroimagery add to classical behavioral studies on aphasia? Are they both necessary and why?
Neuropsychology, 1994
Brain and Language 1.2 Language in the Brain History of Linguistics Behaviourism: language is a learned behaviour, explained by general-purpose learning mechanisms Noam Chomsky challenged behaviourist explanations of language He proposed a cognitive theory of language based on a modular specialised subsystem endowed with a genetically-determined set of rules about language production: a "universal grammar" Evolution of language: sudden, single mutation (Chomsky), or gradual adaptation by natural selection (Pinker) Verbal Behaviour Skinner's approach focused on the circumstances in which language was used; for example, asking for water was functionally a different response from labeling something as water, responding to someone asking for water, etc, which Chomsky criticised as ignoring important questions A child does not, as an English speaker in the presence of a house, utter "house" repeatedly in the presence of reinforcing elders Language as such seems to be learned without, in a sense, being explicitly taught or taught in detail, and behaviorism doesn't offer an account of how this could be so In human language behaviour, ``stimulus'' is not well defined as in more restricted domains of animal behaviour. Name of person may be recalled in absense of the person. ``I have often used the words Eisenhower and Moscow (without ever having been) stimulated by the corresponding objects.'' So also the terms ``response'', ``reinforcement'', ``conditioning'' Language use is a creative activity-no bound on gramatically well-formed sentences one might produce or hear. Almost every sentence uttered is a new combination of words Language Areas in the Brain Broca's Aphasia: difficulty producing language, pauses between words, difficulty reading Wernicke's Aphasia: fluent but nonsensical speech, correct grammar but no semantic content Conduction Aphasia: difficulty repeating words, traditionally thought to be caused by damage to arcuate fasciculus fibres linking Broca's and Wernicke's areas Aphasia seems to affect sign language in basically the same way, though some brain regions in slightly different areas Language is generally lateralised to the left hemisphere Imaging Techniques CT: shows different regions of brain structure MRI: shows different proton densities in different tissues DTI: technique for visualising connections (fibre tracts) in the brain
Cognitive Neuroscience of Natural Language Use: Introduction
The cognitive neuroscience of language studies the neural infrastructure underlying the comprehension and production of language. When we think of language use in our daily lives, the first things that come to mind include colloquial conversations, the small chat on your way to work, reading and writing e-mails, sending text messages, reading a book. To the surprise of outsiders, the topic of study in the cognitive neuroscience of language is rather far removed from these language-in-use examples. There are well-founded (historical) reasons for this (see below), but the current excitement in the study of language comes from new developments that make studying the neural underpinnings of naturally occurring language much more feasible. The chapters in this book provide a state of the art overview of current approaches to making the cognitive neuroscience of language more ‘natural’ in the sense of closer to language as it occurs in real life. Before giving an overview of the book’s content, I will briefly introduce two strands of language research that approaches in this book draw upon.
Language Processing: New Research (pp. 1-32), 2014
This paper provides an update on a decade of neuroimaging studies (using electroencephalography, EEG, and magnetoencephalography, MEG) that have focused on linguistic processing in patients with aphasia. of EEG and MEG techniques for aphasiology; the second reports the procedures, targets and main results of reviewed studies; the last section addresses the following issues: What does neuroimagery add to classical behavioral studies on aphasia? Are they both necessary and why?