Lexicon in the Brain: What Neurobiology Has to Say about Languages

Abstract

Linguists look with high expectancy towards the neurosciences and their findings on the neuronal basis of language(s). New functional neuroimaging techniques such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) or functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), but also EEG and MEGⁱ, have raised an enormous interest in the scientific community (as well as in the general public) and led to enthusiastic exclamations such as “finally, we can have a look at the brain while it is at work”. However, these techniques, just as any other technique, have their specific limitations (cf. Posner and Raichle 1996; see Fabbro 2001 for a summary). The view on the brain with neuroimaging techniques (fMRI and PET) is not yet as fine-grained in spatial resolution as one may wish (see also De Bot, in press). We do not see single neurons at work, but only areas of a variable extension (from about 1.5 to 3 mm, with a 1.5 tesla-tomograph). In the dimension of time, we cannot follow the brain’s activities step by step in the order of milliseconds. Electrophysiological techniques, on the other hand, provide a good time-resolution, but are even less precise in the localisation. Compromises between a better time or spatial resolution have always to be made.