THE MACROSTRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN AUG. 28, 2015 – DAY 3 Brain & Language LING NSCI Fall 2015

Course organization Fun with 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 2

THE FIELDS OF LINGUISTICS Review 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 3

Summary of the fields of linguistics FieldObservations graphemicsthe study of writing systems; a little with visual language auditory phoneticsyes articulatory phoneticsyes phonologyyes prosodythe study of stress and intonation; yes morphologyyes syntaxyes semanticsyes pragmaticsa little lexicographythe study of words; implicit in some of the others language developmentthe study of how children learn language; maybe bi- or multilingualismthe study of people who speak more than one language; a little sociolinguisticsthe study of how language varies by social group; no dialectologythe study of the language of specific (usually geographically defined) social groups; no historical linguisticsthe study of how languages change; no, neuroscience can’t study dead people, but … evolution of languagethe study of how humans acquired language; maybe – what fun! almost pure speculation anthropological linguisticsthe study of how language varies by social group, usually pre-industrial or non-Western; no 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 4

THE MACROSTRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN Review 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 5

Functions 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 6

Up and down in the brain 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 7

The two hemispheres 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 8

Some speculation 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 9

NAMING CONVENTIONS 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 10

Gyri & sulci 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 11

Gyri & sulci, lateral view 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 12

Gyri & sulci, medial view 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 13

Gyrii AnG - angular gyrus FP - frontal pole IFG - inferior frontal gyrus IOG - inferior occipital gyrus ITG - inferior temporal gyrus LOG - lateral occipital gyrus MFG - middle frontal gyrus MTG - middle temporal gyrus OG - orbital gyrus oper - pars opercularis (IFG) orb - pars orbitalis (IFG) tri - pars triangularis (IFG) poCG - postcentral gyrus preCG - precentral gyrus SFG - superior frontal gyrus SOG - superior occipital gyrus SPL - superior parietal lobe STG - superior temporal gyrus SmG - supramarginal gyrus TP - temporal pole 8/26/15 Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 14

Sulcii cs - central sulcus (Rolandic) hr - horizontal ramus ifs - inferior frontal sulcus ios - inferior occipital sulcus ips - intraparietal sulcus syl - lateral fissure (Sylvian) los - lateral occipital sulcus ls - lunate sulcus pof - parieto-occipital fissure pocs - postcentral sulcus precs - precentral sulcus sfs - superior frontal sulcus tos - transoccipital sulcus vr - vertical ramus 8/26/15 Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 15

Brodmann's areas 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 16

Brodmann's areas, functions 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 17

Stereotaxic (Talairach) coordinates MRI scans vary greatly between individuals due to differences in slice orientation and brain features (i.e. brain size and shape varies across individuals). Therefore, it is generally useful to ‘normalize’ scans to a standard template. Normalization is the process of translating, rotating, scaling, and maybe warping a brain to roughly match a standard template image. After normalization, it is possible to report locations using stereotaxic (“Talairach”) coordinates, which are three numbers (X,Y,Z) that describe the distance from the anterior commissure (the 'origin' of Talairach space). The X,Y,Z dimensions refer to left-right, posterior-anterior, and ventral-dorsal respectively. So 38x-64x58mm refers to a point in right posterior dorsal region of the brain. 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 18

NEUROLINGUISTICS 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 19

8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 20 Language areas of the brain

8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 21 The Broca-Wernicke-Lichtheim model (of the LH)

The two main aphasias Ingram p. 49 Broca’s C: What brought you to the hospital? P: yes … ah … Monday … ah … Dad … Peter Hogan, and Dad … ah … hospital … and ah … Wednesday … Wednesday … nine o’clock and ah Thursday … ten o’clock … doctors two … two … an doctors and … ah … teeth … yah … and a doctor an girl … and gums, an I. Wernicke’s C: What brings you to the hospital? Boy, I’m sweating, I’m awful nervous, you know, once in a while I get caught up, I can’t mention the tarripote, a month ago, quite a little, I’ve done a lot well, I impose a lot, while on the other hand, you know what I mean, I have to run around, look it over, trebbin and all that sort of stuff. 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 22

8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 23 Hickok & Poeppel (2004)’s model superimposed on the brain

Old vs. new 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 24

One of the crucial challenges of contemporary neuroscience If there is feedback in the brain how 'high' does it go? 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 25

Echoes of the Spoken Past: Why real-world speech perception is not all that auditory to the brain Jeremy Skipper, University College London, UK What do we hear when someone speaks? What does auditory cortex (AC) do with that information? I present neuroimaging data suggesting that the impression that we simply hear “sounds” and that AC is the bottom of feedforward processing hierarchy are the wrong answers to these questions. Rather, when engaged by naturalistic language stimuli, AC is the afferent recipient of multimodal information extracted from preceding discourse content, observable mouth movements, speech-associated gestures, emotional facial displays, written text, and more. Such contextual information seems to be the starting point for the formation of hypotheses that are used to derive predictions about the nature of the information that might arrive in AC. Strong predictions result in a large conservation of metabolic resources in AC, presumably because no further evidence from the auditory world is required to confirm hypotheses. Thus, results suggest that a great deal of what we hear is not sound but, rather, an echo of internal knowledge that shapes and constrains interpretation of the impoverished information reaching AC. That is, hearing speech and AC functioning is a constructive process that relies on multimodal information available during real-world communication. 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 26

NEXT TIME Brain microstructure 8/26/15Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University 27