Language center
In neuroscience and psychology, the term language center refers collectively to the areas of the brain which serve a particular function for speech processing and production.
[1] Language is a core system that gives humans the capacity to solve difficult problems and provides them with a unique type of social interaction.
[2] Language allows individuals to attribute symbols (e.g. words or signs) to specific concepts, and utilize them through sentences and phrases that follow proper grammatical rules.
The basis for this discovery was analyzing speech problems resulting from injuries to this brain region, located in the inferior frontal gyrus.
After working with another patient with a similar impairment, Paul Broca concluded that damage in the inferior frontal gyrus affected articulate language.
[5] Broca's Area is today still considered an important language center, playing a central role in processing syntax, grammar, and sentence structure.
Also, the left AG is activated during problems of multiplication and addition requiring return of arithmetic factors in verbal memory.
[9] The insula is implicated in speech and language, taking part in functional and structural connections with motor neurons, linguistic, sensory, and limbic brain areas.
[5] Also, individuals with thalamic lesions experience difficulties linking semantic concepts with correct phonological representations in word production.
[11] Some characteristics that distinguish dyslexics include errors in phonological processing, causing misreading of unfamiliar words, affecting comprehension; inadequacy of working memory, affecting speaking, reading, and writing; errors in oral reading; oral skill difficulties such as expressing oneself; and writing skill problems in areas such as spelling and general expression.
[13] Dysarthria can be caused by a mechanical difficulty in the vocal cords, or neurological disease, and produces abnormal articulation of phonemes, such as using "b" in place of "p".
[clarification needed][13] Improvement in computer technology in the late 20th century has allowed a better understanding of the correlation between brain and language, in the disorders that this entails.
[2] New medical imaging techniques such as PET and fMRI have allowed researchers to generate pictures showing which areas of a living brain are active at a given time.
In more recent research, subcortical regions (those lying below the cerebral cortex such as the putamen and the caudate nucleus), as well as the pre-motor areas (BA 6), have received increased attention.
It is now accepted that the right hemisphere plays an important role in the processing of suprasegmental acoustic features like prosody, which is "the rhythmic and melodic variations in speech".
Computerized tomographic (CT) scans are a technique dating to the 1970s, and produce low spatial resolution, but are capable of providing the location of injuries in vivo.
[2] The differentiation of speech production into only two large sections of the brain (i.e. Broca's and Wernicke's areas), which was accepted long before medical imaging techniques, is now considered outdated.
The basis for this discovery was the analysis of speech problems resulting from injuries to this brain region, located in the inferior frontal gyrus.
This area was named for German doctor Carl Wernicke, who discovered it in 1874 in the course of his research into aphasias (loss of ability to speak).
Broca's area is today still considered an important language center, playing a central role in processing syntax, grammar, and sentence structure.
