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Neurobiology: Language By, In, Through and Across the Brain
Abstract
Language has come to be commonly understood as something accomplished by the brain. Much scientific investigation has consequently focused in looking for language in the brain. Although it may sound intuitive, this approach suggests that language is an object located inside another object. This spatial metaphor has generated important insights into the brain sites important for language, from nineteenth century studies of brain-damaged patients to more recent and refined evidence from brain imaging.
EL ORIGEN DEL LENGUAJE DESDE UN DISEÑADOR INTELIGENTE. Este artículo lo inicio con dos axiomas; el primero es que el ser humano es el único que tiene lenguaje; los animales tienen un código de comunicación limitado. El segundo axioma se relaciona con el anterior y declara que el lenguaje es la facultad de abstraer, conceptualizar, significar y comunicar, por lo tanto, sólo le fue otorgada al ser humano. Esto implica que hay una relación estrecha entre la capacidad cognitiva y la lingüística.
Recent data obtained by various methods of clinical investigations suggest an organization of language in the human brain involving compartmentalization into separate systems subserving different language functions. Each system includes multiple essential areas localized in the frontal and temporoparietal cortex of the dominant hemisphere, as well as widely dispersed neurons. All components of a system are activated in parallel, possibly by ascending thalamocortical circuits. The features peculiar to cerebral language organization include not only the lateralization of essential areas to one hemisphere, but also a substantial variance in the individual patterns of localization within that hemisphere, a variance that in part relates to individual differences in verbal skills.
In our recent book, we present a parallel distributed processing theory of the acquisition, representation and use of human semantic knowledge. The theory proposes that semantic abilities arise from the flow of activation amongst simple, neuron-like processing units, as governed by the strengths of interconnecting weights; and that acquisition of new semantic information involves the gradual adjustment of weights in the system in response to experience. These simple ideas explain a wide range of empirical phenomena from studies of categorization, lexical acquisition, and disordered semantic cognition. In this précis we focus on phenomena central to the reaction against similarity-based theories that arose in the 1980's and that subsequently motivated the "theory-theory" approach to semantic knowledge. Specifically, we consider i) how concepts differentiate in early development, ii) why some groupings of items seem to form "good" or coherent categories while others do not, iii) why different properties seem central or important to different concepts, iv) why children and adults sometimes attest to beliefs that seem to contradict their direct experience, v) how concepts reorganize between the ages of 4 and 10, and vi) the relationship between causal knowledge and semantic knowledge. The explanations for these phenomena are illustrated with reference to a simple feed-forward connectionist model; and the relationship between this simple model, the broader theory, and more general issues in cognitive science are discussed.
Theoretical considerations and diverse empirical data from clinical, psycholinguistic, and developmental studies suggest that language comprehension processes are decomposable into separate subsystems, including distinct systems for semantic and grammatical processing. Here we report that event-related potentials (ERPs) to syntactically well-formed but semantically anomalous sentences produced a pattern of brain activity that is distinct in timing and distribution from the patterns elicited by syntactically deviant sentences, and further, that different types of syntactic deviance produced distinct ERP patterns. Forty right-handed young adults read sentences presented at 2 words/sec while ERPs were recorded from over several positions between and within the hemispheres. Half of the sentences were semantically and grammatically acceptable and were controls for the remainder, which contained sentence medial words that violated (1) semantic expectations, (2) phrase structure rules, or (3) WH-movement constraints on Specificity and (4) Subjacency. As in prior research, the semantic anomalies produced a negative potential, N400, that was bilaterally distributed and was largest over posterior regions. The phrase structure violations enhanced the N125 response over anterior regions of the left hemisphere, and elicited a negative response (300-500 msec) over temporal and parietal regions of the left hemisphere. Violations of Specificity constraints produced a slow negative potential, evident by 125 msec, that was also largest over anterior regions of the left hemisphere. Violations of Subjacency constraints elicited a broadly and symmetrically distributed positivity that onset around 200 msec. The distinct timing and distribution of these effects provide biological support for theories that distinguish between these types of grammatical rules and constraints and more generally for the proposal that semantic and grammatical processes are distinct subsystems within the language faculty.
different languages) may abide by abstract universal principles, but these principles ‐though universal descriptively ‐ may,be subserved by diverse types of neural processes. This universality could be called shallow because it is not found in neurocognitive architecture, but only in the description of linguistic behavior. Deep universality, on the contrary, would involve neurofunctional principles shared by all typically developing brains. I will argue below that from a developmental neuroscience point of view, it is not very likely that any deeply universal principles are specifically linguistic. Functional domains,that begin to develop before the onset of language acquisition (such as visuomotor coordination, polymodal integration, joint attention, working memory) present us with much more probable roots for linguistic universals. 2.,What is universal in human brains? When examining human brains, either on a macroscopic level of large anatomical landmarks (e.g., the inferior
This critical history of research on acquired language deficits (aphasias) demonstrates the usefulness of linguistic analysis of aphasic syndrome for neuropsychology, linguistics, and psycholinguistics. Drawing on new empirical studies, Grodzinsky concludes that the use of grammatical tools for the description of the aphasias is critical. The selective nature of these deficits offers a novel view into the inner workings of our language faculty and the mechanisms that support it.
In contrast to other proposals that the left anterior cerebral cortex is crucial for all syntactic capacity, Grodzinsky's discoveries support his theory that this region is necessary for only a small component of the human language faculty. On this basis he provides a detailed explanation for many aphasic phenomena - including a number of puzzling cross-linguistic aphasia differences - and uses aphasic data to evaluate competing linguistic theories.
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Traditional clinical approaches to the brain organization for language have in recent decades been complemented by neuroimaging techniques, most of which can be used with minimal risk in children. A growing literature mapping out developmental changes suggests that children activate grossly the same inferior frontal and temporo-parietal brain areas as adults during various types of language processing. However, there is some evidence indicating that typical leftlateralization becomes more robust with age and that frontal activity increases at the expense of posterior activation in visual cortices. While it is highly likely that genes play an important role in determining the brain organization for language, there is also ample evidence for high levels of plasticity. Early left hemisphere damage may result in reorganization of language in the right hemisphere, with often only subtle detrimental effects on language function. There is no consensus on why specific regions in perisylvian cortex are crucial for language processing, but evidence from animal and human studies suggests that Broca's area may become a 'language area' by virtue of its unique connectivity patterns, due to which several functional circuits crucial for language acquisition converge in inferior frontal cortex.
Le "Cours" de Saussure constitue un ouvrage clé pour quiconque s'intéresse au langage et aux langues ; il est considéré comme fondateur de la linguistique moderne. C'est là que se trouvent exprimés pour la première fois certains des concepts les plus féconds de la linguistique : oppositions binaires (langue/parole, signifiant/signifié, synchronie/diachronie), arbitraire du signe. Ces concepts seront largement affinés ou contestés, et nourriront la réflexion de générations de linguistes. Avec la reproduction de l'édition originale de 1916 établie par les élèves de Saussure d'après leurs notes, le lecteur trouvera un appareil critique complet dû à Tullio de Mauro, dont une biographie de Saussure et des notes. Les commentaires sont particulièrement instructifs, car ils font apparaître les violentes critiques qui ont suivi la publication du "Cours", ainsi que l'influence considérable qu'il a exercée et continue d'exercer. Ce livre peut être lu sans connaissances préalables en linguistique. "–Guillaume Segerer"
The coming of language occurs at about the same age in every healthy child throughout the world, strongly supporting the concept that genetically determined processes of maturation, rather than environmental influences, underlie capacity for speech and verbal understanding. Dr. Lenneberg points out the implications of this concept for the therapeutic and educational approach to children with hearing or speech deficits.
The modular organization of nervous systems is a widely documented principle of design for both vertebrate and invertebrate brains of which the columnar organization of the neocortex is an example. The classical cytoarchitectural areas of the neocortex are composed of smaller units, local neural circuits repeated iteratively within each area. Modules may vary in cell type and number, in internal and external connectivity, and in mode of neuronal processing between different large entities; within any single large entity they have a basic similarity of internal design and operation. Modules are most commonly grouped into entities by sets of dominating external connections. This unifying factor is most obvious for the heterotypical sensory and motor areas of the neocortex. Columnar defining factors in homotypical areas are generated, in part, within the cortex itself. The set of all modules composing such an entity may be fractionated into different modular subsets by different extrinsic connections. Linkages between them and subsets in other large entities form distributed systems. The neighborhood relations between connected subsets of modules in different entities result in nested distributed systems that serve distributed functions. A cortical area defined in classical cytoarchitectural terms may belong to more than one and sometimes to several distributed systems. Columns in cytoarchitectural areas located at some distance from one another, but with some common properties, may be linked by long-range, intracortical connections.
One of the challenges to functional neuroimaging is to understand how the component processes of reading comprehension emerge from the neural activity in a network of brain regions. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine lexical and syntactic processing in reading comprehension by independently manipulating the cognitive demand on each of the two processes of interest. After establishing a consistency with earlier research showing the involvement of the left perisylvian language areas in both lexical access and syntactic processing, the study produced new findings that are surprising in two ways: (i) the lexical and syntactic factors each impact not just individual areas, but they affect the activation in a network of left-hemisphere areas, suggesting that changing the computational load imposed by a given process produces a cascade of effects in a number of collaborating areas; and (ii) the lexical and syntactic factors usually interact in determining the amount of activation in each affected area, suggesting that comprehension processes that operate on different levels of language may nevertheless draw on a shared infrastructure of cortical resources. The results suggest that many processes in sentence comprehension involve multiple brain regions, and that many brain regions contribute to more than one comprehension process. The implication is that the language network consists of brain areas which each have multiple relative specializations and which engage in extensive interarea collaborations.
In this volume the authors combine two clinically-oriented approaches to language disorder. The clinical aspects of aphasia syndromes are stressed but the authors also review assessment techniques, linguistic analyses, problems of aphasia classification, and frequently occuring related disorders such as alexia, agraphia and acalculia. In addition, commonly encountered speech disorders, neurobehavioral and psychiatric problems commonly associated with apasia, and the language characteristics of aging and dementia reviewed. A neural basis is proposed for aphasia and related problems. Finally, aspects of rehabilitation and recovery are presented.
The book from which these sections are excerpted (N. Chomsky, Rules and Representations, Columbia University Press, 1980) is concerned with the prospects for assimilating the study of human intelligence and its products to the natural sciences through the investigation of cognitive structures, understood as systems of rules and representations that can be regarded as “mental organs.” These mental structui′es serve as the vehicles for the exercise of various capacities. They develop in the mind on the basis of an innate endowment that permits the growth of rich and highly articulated structures along an intrinsically determined course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of experience, which fixes parameters in an intricate system of predetermined form. It is argued that the mind is modular in character, with a diversity of cognitive structures, each with its specific properties arid principles. Knowledge of language, of the behavior of objects, and much else crucially involves these mental structures, and is thus not characterizable in terms of capacities, dispositions, or practical abilities, nor is it necessarily grounded in experience in the standard sense of this term.Various types of knowledge and modes of knowledge acquisition are discussed in these terms. Some of the properties of the language faculty are investigated. The basic cognitive relation is “knowing a grammar”; knowledge of language is derivative and, correspondingly, raises further problems. Language as commonly understood is not a unitary phenomenon but involves a number of interacting systems: the “computational” system of grammar, which provides the representations of sound and meaning that permit a rich range of expressive potential, is distinct from a conceptual system with its own properties; knowledge of language must be distinguished from knowledge of how to use a language; and the various systems that enter into the knowledge and use of language must be further analyzed into their specific subcomponents.
A number of prototypical features of theory construction in neurolinguistics and neuropsychology are evaluated from a predominantly biological point of view. The current state of neuropsychology, particularly of cognitive neuropsychology, is traced back both to the localizationist heritage and to the influence of artificial intelligence. The conventional assumption of modularity, i.e. of discreteness and autonomy of processing subsystems, is criticized as resulting from a non-biological engineering approach which is more appropriate for building clever machines than for understanding naturally selected intelligence. Furthermore, a relativistic interpretation of modularity versus holism, and similarly of innateness versus environmental determination, is proposed which permits us to understand such properties as graded and as dependent upon the interpretation of empirical data biassed by theoretical presuppositions.
Part I. A Theory of Speech Acts: 1. Methods and scope 2. Expressions, meaning and speech acts 3. The structure of illocutionary acts 4. Reference as a speech act 5. Predication Part II. Some Applications of the Theory: 6. Three fallacies in contemporary philosophy 7. Problems of reference 8. Deriving 'ought' from 'is' Index.
The purpose of this study was to examine developmental changes in the organization of brain activity linked to comprehension of single words in 13‐ to 20‐month‐old infants. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as children listened to a series of words whose meanings were understood by the child, words whose meanings the child did not understand, and backward words. The results were consistent with a previous study suggesting that ERPs differed as a function of word meaning within 200 ms after word onset. At 13 to 17 months, ERP differences between comprehended and unknown words were bilateral and broadly distributed over anterior and posterior regions. In contrast, at 20 months of age these effects were limited to temporal and parietal regions of the left hemisphere. The results are discussed in relation to the general effects of maturation, the maturation of language‐relevant brain systems, and the development of brain systems linked to level of ability independent of chronological age. We offer the working hypothesis that the neurophysiological changes that give rise to certain ERP effects reported here are linked to the remarkable changes in early lexical development that typically occur between 13 and 20 months, whereas others produce more general maturational effects.
Neuropsychological results are increasingly cited in cognitive theories although their methodology has been severely criticised. The book argues for an eclectic approach but particularly stresses the use of single-case studies. A range of potential artifacts exists when inferences are made from such studies to the organisation of normal function – for example, resource differences among tasks, premorbid individual differences, and reorganisation of function. The use of “strong” and “classical” dissociations minimises potential artifacts. The theoretical convergence between findings from fields where cognitive neuropsychology is well developed and those from the normal literature strongly suggests that the potential artifacts are not critical. The fields examined in detail in this respect are short-term memory, reading, writing, the organisation of input and output speech systems, and visual perception. Functional dissociation data suggest that not only are input systems organised modularly, but so are central systems. This conclusion is supported by findings on impairment of knowledge, visual attention, supervisory functions, memory, and consciousness.
Understanding how the brain works is probably the greatest scientific and intellectual challenge of our generation. The cerebral cortex is the instrument by which we carry the most complex mental functions. Fortunately, there exists an immense body of knowledge concerning both cortical structure and the properties of single neurons in the cortex. With the advent of the supercomputer, there has been increased interest in neural network modeling. What is needed is a new approach to an understanding of the mammalian cerebral cortex that will provide a link between the physiological description and the computer model. This book meets that need by combining anatomy, physiology, and modeling to achieve a quantitative description of cortical function. The material is presented didactically, starting with descriptive anatomy and comprehensively examining all aspects of modeling. The book gradually leads the reader from the macroscopic cortical anatomy and standard electrophysiological properties of single neurons to neural network models and synfire chains. The most modern trends in neural network modeling are explored.
The present version is more than twice as long as the James Lectures and contains many changes made to conform with recent progress in the experimental analysis of behavior, human and otherwise. Although the emphasis is not upon experimental or statistical facts, the book is not theoretical in the usual sense. It makes no appeal to hypothetical explanatory entities. The ultimate aim is the prediction and control of verbal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Presents detailed criticisms and discussions of the scientific validity of B. F. Skinner's speculations on human behavior contained in Beyond Freedom and Dignity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Parcellation and heterochrony (neoteny) reflect the pattern and rate of a growth mechanism in morphogenesis. Structure (morphology) and function (behavior) are staged realizations of morphogenetic process. This process continues into adult cognition in the actualization of the mind/brain state. Parcellation obtains in the pruning of cells and connections in early growth, whereas inhibition obtains in a relatively stable morphology with constraints on context: item transforms in microgeny. Selective retardation in process (neoteny) leads to growth at earlier (juvenile) phases. This accounts for the specification of the language areas and elaboration at preliminary phases in mind — for example, dominance, introspection, and creativity.
In this extraordinarily original and profound work, Noam Chomsky discusses themes in the study of language and mind since the end of the sixteenth century in order to explain the motivations and methods that underlie his work in linguistics, the science of mind, and even politics. This edition includes a new and specially written introduction by James Mc Gilvray, contextualising the work for the twenty-first century. It has been made more accessible to a larger audience; all the French and German in the original edition has been translated, and the notes and bibliography have been brought up to date. The relationship between the original edition (published in 1966) and contemporary biolinguistic work is also explained. This challenging volume is an important contribution to the study of language and mind, and to the history of these studies since the end of the sixteenth century.
The typical functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) study presents a formidable problem of multiple statistical comparisons (i.e, > 10,000 in a 128 x 128 image). To protect against false positives, investigators have typically relied on decreasing the per pixel false positive probability. This approach incurs an inevitable loss of power to detect statistically significant activity. An alternative approach, which relies on the assumption that areas of true neural activity will tend to stimulate signal changes over contiguous pixels, is presented. If one knows the probability distribution of such cluster sizes as a function of per pixel false positive probability, one can use cluster-size thresholds independently to reject false positives. Both Monte Carlo simulations and fMRI studies of human subjects have been used to verify that this approach can improve statistical power by as much as fivefold over techniques that rely solely on adjusting per pixel false positive probabilities.