LANGUAGE

The language area of the brain surrounds the Sylvian fissure in the dominant hemisphere. This area is divided into two major components named after the pioneers Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke. Broca's area lies in the third frontal convolution, just anterior to the face area of the motor cortex and just above the Sylvian fissure. This is often described as the motor, or expressive, speech area; damage to it results in Broca's aphasia, a language disorder characterized by deliberate, telegraphic speech with very simple grammatical structure though the speaker may be quite clear as to what he wishes to say and may communicate successfully. Wernicke's area is in the superior part of the posterior temporal lobe; it is close to the auditory cortex and is classically considered to be the receptive language, or language comprehension, centre. A patient with Wernicke's aphasia has difficulty understanding language; his own speech is typically fluent but is empty of content and characterized by circumlocutions, a high incidence of vague words like "thing," and sometimes neologisms and senseless "word salad." The entire posterior language area extends into the parietal lobe and is connected to Broca's area by a fibre tract called the arcuate fasciculus. Damage to this tract has been implicated in conduction aphasia, a disorder in which the patient can understand and speak but has difficulty in repeating what is said to him. The suggestion is that, in this condition, language can be comprehended by the posterior zone and spoken by the anterior zone, but it can not be easily shuttled from one to the other.

It is important to note that aphasia is a disorder of language and not of speech (although an apraxia of speech, in which the programming of motor speech output is affected, may accompany aphasia). The writing and reading of aphasic patients, therefore, usually commits the same type of error as their speech, while the reverse is not the case. Isolated disorders of writing (dysgraphia) or, more commonly, reading (dyslexia) may occur as well, but these reflect a disruption of the additional processing required for these activities over and above that required for language.

One particular form of dyslexia deserves mention, as it is a clear example of a disconnection syndrome--a disorder resulting from the disconnection of two areas of the brain rather than from damage to a "centre." This is dyslexia without dysgraphia, or letter-by-letter reading, so called because it is not associated with writing disturbance and because the patients tend to attempt to read by spelling words out loud letter by letter. It usually results from a lesion in the posterior part of the left hemisphere that disconnects the visual areas of the brain from the language areas. This renders the language areas effectively blind, so that they cannot be brought to bear on visible language such as the written word. Writing is unaffected because the right hand is still connected to the left hemisphere, and, if letters can be spoken out loud correctly (which is not always the case), the patient will be able to hear himself say them and reintegrate them into words. Disconnection syndromes are an important concept in understanding behavioral disorders associated with brain damage. The possibility that deficits are caused by disconnection must always be borne in mind.

 

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica