Abstract
Humans have a strong motivation to communicate, a quasi-instinctive drive. Language is a learned skill based on a functional language system distributed across numerous cortical and subcortical structures. These circuits constitute a genetically predetermined set that defines the characteristics of language. The linguistic machinery is organized around distinct neuronal sets for lexical, grammatical, and phonological processing. The feature-based algorithm used by our brain to identify speech sounds is not yet completely understood.
The historical identification of brain areas involved in language and speech processing goes back to the classical clinical–anatomical method, based on a correlation between a given brain function such as language and damage to a particular brain area. It is now clear that when we speak, we engage not only the brain areas described by nineteenth-century neurologists as the specific language areas but also a much larger “nonlinguistic network.”
The emerging picture from newer studies points to the fact that neuronal representations are not only widely distributed across brain regions but depend on dynamic interactions between regions. Language—one of the most complex mental activities—is dependent on conceptual knowledge stored in vast regions of the brain, associated with sensory and motor control. Language and executive functions should not be separated but considered as part of a larger cognitive network. Language learning disabilities such as developmental stuttering and dyslexia are described.
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Notes
- 1.
Psychophysics is the science that analyzes in a quantitative manner the relationship between a physical stimulus and its subjective perception.
- 2.
A pixel is the smallest element in a digital picture. Voxels are images that correspond to a neuronal activation in a given volume of the brain.
- 3.
A phoneme is a perceptually distinct phonological unit that distinguishes one word from another, for example, bad and bat.
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Steck, A., Steck, B. (2016). Language. In: Brain and Mind. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21287-6_7
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