Grace Mission College

Catiningan, Socorro, Oriental Mindoro

E-Mail: grace.missioncollege@yahoo.com

“An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge”
2 Timothy 2:15

WEEK 14: LANGUAGE AND BRAIN

Language and the Brain experienced events (e.g. that he met you five minutes ago). These and
other findings have led to the proposal that lexical memory depends on declarative memory, a brain
system that underlies the learning and use of knowledge about facts and events (see Box 7.2).

Box 7.2 A biocognitive perspective on lexicon and grammar: the Declarative/Procedural Model

The basic premise of the Declarative/Procedural Model is that language depends on two well-
studied brain memory systems that have been implicated in nonlanguage functions in animals and humans
(Ullman 2001). The declarative memory system subserves the learning, representation, and use of
knowledge about facts and events, such as the fact that chairs are for sitting on, or that you had ravioli for
dinner last night. The knowledge learned in this system is at least partly, but not completely, explicit –
that is, available to conscious awareness.
The hippocampus and other medial temporal structures learn new memories, which eventually
depend largely on neocortical regions, particularly in the temporal lobes. Declarative memory function
can be enhanced by estrogen, perhaps via the modulation of the acetylcholine.

The procedural memory system underlies the implicit (nonconscious) learning of new, and the
control of long-established, motor and cognitive “skills” and “habits,” especially those involving
sequences – for example, riding a bicycle or fly-fishing. The system is composed of a network of
interconnected brain structures rooted in frontal/basal-ganglia circuits, including Broca’s area. The
neurotransmitter dopamine plays a particularly important role in aspects of procedural learning. For
example, patients with Parkinson’s disease, who suffer from a loss of dopamine-producing cells in the
basal ganglia, have trouble with procedural learning.

This system plays computationally analogous roles across grammatical subdomains, including
syntax and morphology (e.g. in the composition of English regular past tenses, walk -ed). In the main
text we discuss different sources of evidence that support these various predictions.

Understanding sentences: the movie

The spatiotemporal dynamics of syntax have mainly been studied in sentence comprehension. As
in word production, our understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of sentence comprehension derives
from many different sources of evidence, including studies of brain-damaged patients, hemodynamic
neuroimaging, ERPs, MEG, and psycholinguistic studies.

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INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS ANGIE B. DALOGDOG
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 However, because syntactic processing is extremely complex, a clear understanding of it has yet
to emerge, and different researchers have interpreted the data in somewhat different ways.

When you hear each word in a sentence, your brain first performs phonological processing in order
to identify the word form, at which point syntactic processing begins. At about 150 to 200 milliseconds
after the word begins, its grammatical category (e.g. noun vs. verb) is accessed in the anterior superior
temporal cortex. This allows the word to be incorporated into the syntactic structure, which takes place
around the same time period in the region of inferior BA 44 and the frontal operculum.

Chapter Summary

At the beginning of this chapter, we situated the study of the biology of language in a broader
scientific context. We emphasized that one must consider every aspect of the biology of language, which
must moreover be examined together with the processing and representation of language.
First, we took a tour of the biology of the brain, from neuroanatomy
down to neurons, hormones, neurotransmitters, and genes. Second, we discussed several major questions
that have been asked about the biology of language. Third, we examined the primary methods that are
currently used in the investigation of the biological bases of language.
We emphasized the importance of using multiple complementary methods in order to obtain
converging evidence. Fourth, we reviewed existing evidence on the biology of language, and discussed
explanations that have been proposed to account for this evidence. The study of the biology of language
is just beginning. In fact, most of the evidence presented in this chapter was reported within the past ten
years. The recent emergence of many of the techniques described above, as well as others that will soon
appear, will likely lead to an ever-larger explosion of research on the biological bases of language. The
future is wide open and exciting!

TASKS
Exercise 1

Different methods used in the study of language have different strengths and weaknesses. Of the
methods discussed here, describe which ones are most appropriate for: (a) localizing functions to
particular brain structures; (b) revealing the spatiotemporal course of language processing. Explain your
answers.

Exercise 2

What are the advantages and disadvantages of direct cortical recording as compared to ERPs?

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INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS ANGIE B. DALOGDOG
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