Portfolio
Brain and Language: Importance of Brain in Language
Processing
Term project in the course of CS789 Special Topics in Language
Acquisition, Evolution and Origins by SUMIT MUNDHRA under guidance of
Dr. HARISH KARNICK
Dr. ACHALA RAINA
[Presented on 20th dec 2005]
Abstract
This paper deals with the studies in Neurological Basis of Language
Processing. As evident from various studies done by many researchers, the human brain typically has some parts dealing with language processing. It is always claimed that some parts of brain deal with some specific tasks in language processing. This claim is found to be true to some extent. Some portions of human brain are always involved in language related specific tasks like word production and comprehension or syntax and semantic processing. But the earlier accepted hypothesis that only two classical parts of brain,
Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, deal with language was discarded with the evidences of involvement of other brain parts in language related tasks.
One important hypothesis that only Left Hemisphere is responsible for language and not the Right Hemisphere, was also disproven by the studies showing the activation of Right Hemisphere parts of brain during language processing. It is true that
Left Hemisphere is dominating but Right Hemisphere also finds some role in language.
This fact is shown by various studies over sign language users. In case of spoken language users, auditory speech processing activates right hemisphere.
With bilinguals it was believed that all the languages (more than two languages also) are localized in the same cerebral areas. But this had a controversy. It is proved by some experiments that brain areas recruited for L1 (primary language or the mother tongue) learning and processing are different from those recruited for L2 (second language acquired).
The concept of laterization, localized and distributed models of language, and whether language acquisition
Processing
Term project in the course of CS789 Special Topics in Language
Acquisition, Evolution and Origins by SUMIT MUNDHRA under guidance of
Dr. HARISH KARNICK
Dr. ACHALA RAINA
[Presented on 20th dec 2005]
Abstract
This paper deals with the studies in Neurological Basis of Language
Processing. As evident from various studies done by many researchers, the human brain typically has some parts dealing with language processing. It is always claimed that some parts of brain deal with some specific tasks in language processing. This claim is found to be true to some extent. Some portions of human brain are always involved in language related specific tasks like word production and comprehension or syntax and semantic processing. But the earlier accepted hypothesis that only two classical parts of brain,
Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, deal with language was discarded with the evidences of involvement of other brain parts in language related tasks.
One important hypothesis that only Left Hemisphere is responsible for language and not the Right Hemisphere, was also disproven by the studies showing the activation of Right Hemisphere parts of brain during language processing. It is true that
Left Hemisphere is dominating but Right Hemisphere also finds some role in language.
This fact is shown by various studies over sign language users. In case of spoken language users, auditory speech processing activates right hemisphere.
With bilinguals it was believed that all the languages (more than two languages also) are localized in the same cerebral areas. But this had a controversy. It is proved by some experiments that brain areas recruited for L1 (primary language or the mother tongue) learning and processing are different from those recruited for L2 (second language acquired).
The concept of laterization, localized and distributed models of language, and whether language acquisition