Dissolution:

Language loss

Dissolution :
Causes: Unhappy accident
Traumatic event
Some unfortunate roll
of
genetic dice.

Give us information about how the human mind controls our

attempts to communicate

Neurolinguistics and language loss

The evidence of Aphasia
An example of Psycholinguistic dissolution : loss of
language due to brain damage.
Assumptions:
distinct

-mind and brain are relatively

the mind and brain are one.

Misunderstandings: -Brain have two separate and
virtually identical hemispheres. There are millions of
association pathways which connect the left and right
hemisphere together.
-Is represented as a fact that there are left brained
and right brained people in the same way that lefthanded and right handed
Corpus collosum: connects the two
hemispheres

Brain identification:
The brain has two vertical strips :

Motor
cortex
Sensor
y
cortex

Primary area of the

brain for the
initiation of all
voluntary muscular
movements.
Process all
sensations to the
brain from the body

Those two strips are located to the control of

speech and the sensation of speech sounds.

Neurologic
al system

The top part of the

brain which controls
the lower extremity of
the body and vice
versa

LEFT HEMISPHERE
Brocas
area

Wernicke
s area

A French
physician: Paul
Broca

GermanAustrian
physician: Carl
Wernicke

Aphasia: the
loss of speech
or language
due to brain
damage.

Same effect if
Brocas area is
damaged

Crucial for the

production and
comprehension
of human
language.

Speech
production

Comprehension
of language

ANIMAL VS. HUMAN

BRAIN
The discoveries about the location of speech
centers in the cerebral cortex helped to
demonstrated that human brain differs from the
brains of most other animals because it was not
equipotential
It seems that human brains create more compact
and powerful neurological computers than
those employed by other animals.

Damage could be arise form : - a loss of blood supply

to that
specific area.
- a stroke
-an invasive injury :
car
accident or
gunshot wound.
There are two specifications in relation to any other
part of the body:
-there are no pain receptors in the brain.
-all the tissue that comprises the human body, the
nerves in the central nervous system do not
regenerate.
-the damage do not grow back, so brain injury is
permanent.

CONSEQUENCES
There are different types of aphasia :

Brocas
area

Wernicke
s area

Characterized by speech and writing which is

slow, very hesitant and in severe cases,
completely inhibited.
Although automatic speech and function words
can remain almost unaffected.
Comprehension is relatively spared.

Speech and writing production are pretty much

intact, but because the sensory cortex is
damaged, patients experience a great deal
processing linguistic input.
Speech flows more fluently and comfortable,
patients tent to ramble somewhat incoherently
Inability to process conversational feedback.

The surgical evidence

Hemispherectomy

Split brain operation

Hemispherectromy
In malignant tumors:
Neurosurgeons open up the affected side of the skull and
remove almost the entire left or right hemisphere.

Differences between children

and adults

amazingly do not
lead to loss of
speech

Suffer aphasia,
except a few words of
automatic speech

Neuroplasticity : the capacity of a young brain to

allocate different areas of the cortex for complex
human behaviors such as language.
Canalization : the laying down of neural pathways
in the young brain in response to repeat exposure
and practice.
When a young brain is traumatic injure, even to the
extent of losing an entire cerebral hemisphere , the
child does not suffer the extensive function loss than
an adult does.

SPLIT BRAIN OPERATION

o Developed in the 70s to help treat specific and
rare cases of epilepsy.
o Was developed to spare suffers from the terrible
trauma of major seizures.
o Procedure: surgeon makes a front to back incision
along the corpus collosum severing most of the
association pathways which connect the left and
the right hemisphere.
o