Language Functions and Brain Organization PDF Download

Author: S. J. Segalowitz
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 1483295362
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Language Functions and Brain Organization

Author: National Academy of Sciences
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309045290
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
The brain ... There is no other part of the human anatomy that is so intriguing. How does it develop and function and why does it sometimes, tragically, degenerate? The answers are complex. In Discovering the Brain, science writer Sandra Ackerman cuts through the complexity to bring this vital topic to the public. The 1990s were declared the "Decade of the Brain" by former President Bush, and the neuroscience community responded with a host of new investigations and conferences. Discovering the Brain is based on the Institute of Medicine conference, Decade of the Brain: Frontiers in Neuroscience and Brain Research. Discovering the Brain is a "field guide" to the brainâ€"an easy-to-read discussion of the brain's physical structure and where functions such as language and music appreciation lie. Ackerman examines: How electrical and chemical signals are conveyed in the brain. The mechanisms by which we see, hear, think, and pay attentionâ€"and how a "gut feeling" actually originates in the brain. Learning and memory retention, including parallels to computer memory and what they might tell us about our own mental capacity. Development of the brain throughout the life span, with a look at the aging brain. Ackerman provides an enlightening chapter on the connection between the brain's physical condition and various mental disorders and notes what progress can realistically be made toward the prevention and treatment of stroke and other ailments. Finally, she explores the potential for major advances during the "Decade of the Brain," with a look at medical imaging techniquesâ€"what various technologies can and cannot tell usâ€"and how the public and private sectors can contribute to continued advances in neuroscience. This highly readable volume will provide the public and policymakersâ€"and many scientists as wellâ€"with a helpful guide to understanding the many discoveries that are sure to be announced throughout the "Decade of the Brain."

Author: Alfredo Ardila
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461307996
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Neuropsychology has presented a particularly formidable array of devel opments during recent years. The number of methods, theoretical ap proaches, and publications has been steadily increasing, permitting a step-by-step approach to a deeper understanding of the tremendously complex relationships existing between brain and behavior. This volume was planned as a collection of papers that, in one way or another, present new research and clinical perspectives or interpretations about brain-behavior relationships. Some chapters present new research in specific topics, others summarize the evidence for a particular the oretical position, and others simply review the area and suggest new perspectives of research. Consistent with the spirit in which the book was planned, the authors present and propose new avenues for developing neuropsychology and understanding the organization of cognitive activity. Part I is devoted to basic theoretical and technical approaches in studying brain organization of cognitive processes. Hanlon and Brown ("Microgenesis: Historical Review and Current Studies") present an over view of some clinical and experimental work from the standpoint of mi crogenetic theory. Microgenesis is considered to be the structural devel opment of a cognition through qualitatively different stages. The authors discuss the growing dissatisfaction with both the old center and pathway theories and the newer modular or componental accounts. They also ex plore how micro genesis can be extended to the interpretation of symp toms of brain damage in developing a structural model of hierarchic levels through which the process of cognitive function unfolds.

Author: Loraine K. Obler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521466417
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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An introduction to neurolinguistics showing how language is organized in the brain.

Author: Peter Hagoort
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262042630
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 753

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A unique overview of the human language faculty at all levels of organization. Language is not only one of the most complex cognitive functions that we command, it is also the aspect of the mind that makes us uniquely human. Research suggests that the human brain exhibits a language readiness not found in the brains of other species. This volume brings together contributions from a range of fields to examine humans' language capacity from multiple perspectives, analyzing it at genetic, neurobiological, psychological, and linguistic levels. In recent decades, advances in computational modeling, neuroimaging, and genetic sequencing have made possible new approaches to the study of language, and the contributors draw on these developments. The book examines cognitive architectures, investigating the functional organization of the major language skills; learning and development trajectories, summarizing the current understanding of the steps and neurocognitive mechanisms in language processing; evolutionary and other preconditions for communication by means of natural language; computational tools for modeling language; cognitive neuroscientific methods that allow observations of the human brain in action, including fMRI, EEG/MEG, and others; the neural infrastructure of language capacity; the genome's role in building and maintaining the language-ready brain; and insights from studying such language-relevant behaviors in nonhuman animals as birdsong and primate vocalization. Section editors Christian F. Beckmann, Carel ten Cate, Simon E. Fisher, Peter Hagoort, Evan Kidd, Stephen C. Levinson, James M. McQueen, Antje S. Meyer, David Poeppel, Caroline F. Rowland, Constance Scharff, Ivan Toni, Willem Zuidema

Author: N. Geschwind
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401020930
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
Philosophers of science work not only with the methods of the sciences but with their contents as well. Substantive issues concerning the relation between mind and matter, between the material basis and the functions of cognition, have been central within the entire history of philosophy. We recall such philosophers as Aristotle, Descartes, the early Kant, Ernst Mach, and the early William James as directly inquiring of the organs and structures of thinking. Science and its philosophical self-criticism are especially and deeply united in the effort to understand the biological brain and human behavior, and so it requires no apology to include this collection of clinical studies among Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. The work of Dr. Norman Geschwind, well represented in this selection, explores the relation between structure and function, between the anatomy of the brain and the 'higher' behavior of men and women. As a clinical neurologist, Geschwind was led to these studies particularly by his in terest in those pathologies which have to do with human perception and language. His research into the anatomical substrates of specific dis orders-and strikingly the aphasias -present a fascinating and provocative examination of fundamental questions which will concern not neurologists alone but also psychologists, physicians, linguists, speech pathologists, educators, anthropologists, historians of medicine, and philosophers, among others, namely all those interested in the characteristic modes of human activity, in speech, in perception, and in the learning process generally.

Author: Ivar Reinvang
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 147579214X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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This book presents the work on aphasia coming out of the Institute for Aphasia and Stroke in Norway during its 10 years of existence. Rather than reviewing previously presented work, it was my desire to give a unified analysis and discussion of our accumulated data. The empirical basis for the analysis is a fairly large group (249 patients) investigated with a standard, comprehensive set of procedures. Tests of language functions must be developed anew for each language, but comparison of my findings with other recent compre hensive studies of aphasia is faciliated by close parallels in test meth ods (Chapter 2). The classification system used is currently the most accepted neurological system, but I have operationalized it for research purposes (Chapter 3). The analyses presented are based on the view that aphasia is an aspect of a multidimensional disturbance of brain function. Find ings of associated disturbances and variations in the aphasic condition over time have been dismissed by some as irrelevant to the study of aphasia as a language deficit. My view is that this rich and complex set of findings gives important clues to the organization of brain functions in humans. I present analyses of the relationship of aphasia to neuropsychological disorders in conceptual organization, memory, visuospatial abilities and apraxia (Chapters 4, 5, and 6), and I study the variations with time of the aphasic condition (Chapter 8).

Author: N.E. Collinge
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1134977174
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 570

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* Examines how language works, accounting for its nature, its use, its study and its history * Two comprehensive indexes of Topics and Technical Terms, and Names * Carefully illustrated to explain key points in the text `This rich repository of information on all aspects of language is a must for all libraries in higher education, schools and larger public libraries.' - Library Review `Each article has an excellent bibliography. In addition, there are comprehensive indexes of topics and technical terms and names. Highly recommended for all college and general public libraries.' - Choice `This important book is in many ways a state-of-the -art survey of current conceptions of, and approaches to, language, with generous references to more detailed sources. Each chapter has a good bibliography.' - Language International `A comprehensive guide ... with very thorough bibliographies ... Collinge's Encyclopedia is recommended to academic libraries.' - Reference Reviews `The bibliographies are an invaluable aid ... the editor is to be congratulated for having done an excellent job ... there are virtually no areas of language and linguistics that do not get a look in somewhere, and there is good signposting in the text itself.' - Nigel Vincent, Times Higher Education Supplement

Author: Sidney J. Segalowitz
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 1483220184
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Language Development and Neurological Theory presents a neuropsychological theory of language development. The discussions are organized around the following themes: cerebral specialization for language in normal and brain-damaged individuals; development of cerebral dominance; and speech perception. Much emphasis is placed on the issue of cerebral specialization, or lateralization. Comprised of 20 chapters, this volume begins with a review of some of the methods used to correlate neurophysiological and behavioral functions, as well as some of the issues involved in trying to unite the empirical science of neuropsychology and the rationalist science of linguistics. The next chapter deals with lateralization for speech sounds shown by young infants and possible factors in the sound signal responsible for the differentiation. Subsequent chapters focus on asymmetries in young children during continuous verbal-nonvisual and visual-nonverbal story tasks; the effects of multi-language elementary school program on the degree of lateralization for language; intramodal and cross-modal pattern perception in stroke patients with lateralized lesions; and visual half-field asymmetries in deaf and hearing children. Several hypotheses as to why language is lateralized to the left hemisphere rather than to the right are also examined. This book is addressed to researchers and students of the neuropsychology of language, whether they call themselves psychologists, neuropsychologists, neurologists, or linguists.

Author: Gregory Hickok
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0124078621
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 1188

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Book Description
Neurobiology of Language explores the study of language, a field that has seen tremendous progress in the last two decades. Key to this progress is the accelerating trend toward integration of neurobiological approaches with the more established understanding of language within cognitive psychology, computer science, and linguistics. This volume serves as the definitive reference on the neurobiology of language, bringing these various advances together into a single volume of 100 concise entries. The organization includes sections on the field's major subfields, with each section covering both empirical data and theoretical perspectives. "Foundational" neurobiological coverage is also provided, including neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, genetics, linguistic, and psycholinguistic data, and models. Foundational reference for the current state of the field of the neurobiology of language Enables brain and language researchers and students to remain up-to-date in this fast-moving field that crosses many disciplinary and subdisciplinary boundaries Provides an accessible entry point for other scientists interested in the area, but not actively working in it – e.g., speech therapists, neurologists, and cognitive psychologists Chapters authored by world leaders in the field – the broadest, most expert coverage available