12.

3 Language areas and their functioning

12.3.1 Broca's area, the motor area, and speech production

Pierre Paul Broca (1824-80) was a French pathologist and neurosurgeon who made
the first great discovery regarding brain and language. He discovered that the speech
area is adjacent to the region of the motor cortex that controls the movement of the
muscles of the articulators of speech. He posited that speech is formulated in Broca's
area and then articulated via the motor area. Subsequent research substantiated
Broca's theory. The link between Broca'sarea and the motor area was later shown to
be the nerve fibres of the arcuate fasciculus.

12.3.2 Wernicke's area, the auditory area, and speech understanding

Speech comprehension
Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist, hypothesized that Broca's speech area was near
the part of the brain that involves areas that control the articulators of speech, and that
two other areas of the brain are involved in the process of speech comprehension. He
proposed that these areas are connected by fires of the arcuate fasciculus, and that
when a word is read, information goes from the eyes to the visual area of the cortex in
the occipital lobe, from there to the angular gyrus, and then to Broca's area, which
causes the auditory form of the word to be activated. Recent research in brain-scan
imaging has shown that the latter part of the model is correct.

The reading process, where Wernicke thought that Broca's area would be activated,
does not occur in many instances. Language functioning occurs elsewhere in the left
hemisphere, as well as in the right hemisphere. The cerebellum and basal ganglia used
to be considered subcortical nuclear systems dedicated to the regulation of motor
function, but contemporary neuroimaging studies have revealed that the cerebellum is
actively involved in search strategies for verbal responses and the basal ganglia
appear to participate in the selection of specific lexical items. The exact way in which
these processes regulate linguistic func-ton remains largely undetermined.

12.4 Right-hemisphere language abilities

12.4.1 Typical language functions

Recent evidence suggests that the right hemisphere is involved in language

processing, and is critical for understanding discourse and other minds. Patients with
right-hemisphere damage have impairments in narrative script, interpretation,
integration of information, conceptualization of the unit as a whole, construction of
new conceptual models, and inferences about another person's beliefs and intentions.
The right hemisphere also has an ability to use knowledge of the world in scripting,
and their speech is disrupted at the level of discourse.
12.4.2 The right hemisphere can take over left-hemisphere functions

The brain operates as a whole, represented by a network of areas, and is able to

readjust its circuits to process language in case normal processing cannot occur. Brain
scans have revealed that blind persons receive verbal communication help from the
brain areas that normally process visual and touch information in sighted people.
Brain plasticity accounts for the growing evidence that damage to lan-guage areas in
the left hemisphere of young children is compensated for, with the right hemisphere
taking over the reacquisition of language. MRI scans of stroke patients revealed that
the area on the right side of the brain corresponding to the inferior frontal gyrus was
heavily used to restore language skills, suggesting that the brain develops previously
underused areas and transfers language processing to those areas to help compensate
the damage. The extent of functional plasticity is not yet established, but it is clear
that the right hemisphere is capable of taking over left-hemisphere functions.

Case studies

Smith and Sugar (1975) report on a boy, BL, aged 5½ years, who had his left
hemisphere removed due to right-sided seizures. 21 years later, BL's speech improved
to normal and he attended regular elementary and high school and graduated from
college with a bachelor's degree with a double major in business and sociology. BL's
performance appears to be normal in pronunciation, grammar, semantics, and usage,
but with some deficits in production of phonemically complex words and in com-
prehension of linguistic contrasts in prosody. Alex, who had a left hemispherectomy
at 8 years old, suddenly began to acquire language when he was 9 years old, attaining
with the right hemi-sphere alone a level of language abilities equivalent to an 8-or 10-
year-old after about five years. These findings indicate that Krashen's (1973) notion
that the right hemisphere will not be able to take over a damaged left hemismhere
after the age of 5 years is in error.

Both monolingual and bilingual children and adults can have language skills restored
after massive damage to the left hemisphere. There are reports of a significant
recovery of language skills in three patients ten years after a stroke and in some
bilingual and multi-lingual patients.