Chapter 10: Language

Thoughts are different than words. You may not be able to think of what you want to say but you still have the thoughts.


Aphasia


Aphasia is deficits in language comprehension and production. Broca's and Wernicke's Aphasia have been study quite a bit; Broca's Aphasia more than Wernkicke's.


Broca's Aphasia is an impairment in syntax. Syntax is important to convey they meaning of something and when you lose the meaning you lose syntax. They have difficulty in finding the words that they want. Broca believed that this was caused by cortical damage in the inferior frontal lobe, but there is more that is involved than Broca thought. By the Twenty Century researchers found that there were deficits in the insular cortex, lenticular nucleus of the basal ganglia and the fibers of passage.


Wernicke's Area includes the poterior third of the superior temporal gyrus. Evidence has shown that you can have Wernicke's Aphasia even without damage to the areas that are believed to be a part of the Wernicke's Area.


Semantic versus Syntactic Processing


Semantic = N400, which processes meaning and the Syntactic = P600 focuses on the appearance. They had subjects read sentences and their EEGs were averaged over time. WIth a word that does not fit in the sentence (anomalous word) there was a negative deflection in the N400 and with the word that was larger than the rest of the words there was a positive wave in the P600. the Semantic effect came before the syntactic effect. Research has shown that any words that are surprising in meaning get a wave.