The document discusses the history of understanding the relationship between language and the brain. It describes early theories such as dualism which viewed the mind and body as separate. It then outlines key figures like Broca and Wernicke who through studying brain damage cases established that language production and comprehension are handled by distinct brain regions. More recent neuroscientists like Poeppel and Friederici study these language areas and how they interact using modern techniques like analyzing neuronal oscillations. The document traces the progression of the field from early philosophies to current models integrating linguistics and neuroscience.
2. Ok.. we now have a (partial)
de鍖nition for Language
Abstract reality that is socially-based, individually-based
AND speci鍖cally-based;
It is a Faculty of the mind;
It is a cognition.
3. Cognition?
Oxford: the mental action or process of acquiring
knowledge and understanding through thought,
experience, and the senses
Psychological Glossary: All the mental activities
associated with thinking, knowing, and remembering. As
you can tell, any of your ideas, thoughts, memories, etc.,
are all types of cognitive processes. What you are doing
(reading and learning this explanation) is a type of
cognition.
5. Dualism
Mind and Body are to completely
independent things.
Descartes: Mind is non-physical - and
therefore, non-spacial - substance.
The mental can exist outside the body.
6. Dualism
Mind and Body are to completely
independent things.
Descartes: Mind is non-physical - and
therefore, non-spacial - substance.
The mental can exist outside the body.
Problem: How to explain non-physical
substance causing physical events?
7. Materialism
There is no mind actually. Everything is physical.
What we call mind is actually an epiphenomenon of physical
interactions.
Radical Behaviorism: mind is an epiphenomenon of stimuli-
response relations.
Problem: It doesn't explain mental causes as knowledge,
expectation and beliefs.
Logical Behaviorism: mind is an epiphenomenon of logical
relations between a stimulus and a response.
Problem: it just explain mental causes in a event-event relation.
What happens if theres no reason for a change of mind?
Central-State Identity: mind is an epiphenomenon of neurons
arrangement / circuits.
9. By Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58036467
The interest for what is inside the head
goes back many thousands years BC
Trepanning or Trepanation
Surgical intervention
(alive people) in which a
hole was drilled or
scraped into a skull
28. Brocas aphasia
Pierre Paul Broca
Problems with production of closed class words
No problems of comprehension
Prosody not a鍖ected (or most part of it)
Principal conclusion:
Language Production and Language
Comprehension are (anatomically and
physiologically) distinct.
32. Wernickes aphasia
Karl Wernicke
Problems with comprehension
Problems in making sense (semantics)
No problems of articulation or speech production
(in the matter of Phonetics, phonology,
morphology or syntax - in certain extent)
Principal conclusion (con鍖rmed):
Language Production and Language
Comprehension are (anatomically and
physiologically) distinct.
39. When linguistics and
Neuroscience meet
David Poeppel
The functional anatomic model of language
developed with Greg Hickok
Lateralization in auditory processing
Experimental work on the role of neuronal
oscillations in audition and speech perception
41. When linguistics and
Neuroscience meet
Angela Friederici
Neurocognitive Model of Auditory Language
Comprehension
how the processing of syntax and semantics
interacts with other linguistic (phonology,
prosody) and non-linguistic domains (e.g.
memory, emotion, gesture)
Experimental work on the role of neuronal
oscillations in audition and speech perception
42. Friederici (2012): The cortical language circuit: from auditory perception to sentence
comprehension
http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(12)00079-4