Language Loss Language and Psychology

Frontal lobe – Speech Occipital lobe – Vision Cerebellum – Movement Parietal lobe – Touch Pons – Breathing and heartbeat Temporal lobe – Hearing Cerebrum – memory

The human brain is not equipotential (i.e. equally distributed). Different areas of human brain control different language functions.

LANGUAGE LOSS DUE TO BRAIN DAMAGES

The loss of speech due to brain damage

Symptoms – Unable to express themselves by more than a single word at a time – Content words are ok; function words are not – “Yes... ah... Monday... er... Dad and Peter H... and Dad.... er... hospital... and ah... Wednesday... Wednesday, nine o'clock... and oh... Thursday... ten o'clock, ah doctors... two... an' doctors... and er... teeth... yah’” Damaged area – The front regions of the left hemisphere

Symptoms – Fluent speech with no informational value – Comprehension is impaired. “I called my mother on the television and did not understand the door. It was too breakfast, but they came from far to near. My mother is not too old for me to be young.” Damaged area – Temporal lobe of the left hemisphere

Broca’s aphasia – Prevents a person from producing speech – Person can understand language – Words are not properly formed – Speech is slow and slurred. Wernicke’s aphasia – Loss of the ability to understand language – Person can speak clearly but the words that are put together make no sense.

The two hemispheres of the brain is connected by corpus callosum. The function of corpus callosum – To commute the info between the two sides of the brain.

Play the split brain experiments game at dicine/split-brain/index.html dicine/split-brain/index.html

The surgical operation to cut half of your brain!

The adults hardly recover from speech loss after hemispherectomy. The children have good possibilities to regain their full speech ability.

Questions?