PSYC 211 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14: Speech Production, Visual Cortex, Stuttering
8 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Most observations on the physiology of language have been made on people who have suffered strokes, or cerebrovascular accidents (brain damage caused by occlusion/rupture of blood vessel). Most important category of speech disorders is aphasia, a primary disturbance in the comprehension or production of speech. Inability to speak due to paralysis/ deafness is not aphasia. Lateralization: verbal behaviour is a lateralized function; the left hemi = more important. If the left hemi is damaged/ malformed early in life, language dominance is likely to pass to the right hemi. Conversion of perceptions, memories and thoughts into speech uses neural mechanisms of the frontal lobes. Broca"s aphasia: a form of aphasia characterized by agrammatism (troubles using function words such as a, the, some, etc), anomia (inability to name objects), and extreme difficulty in speech articulation. Caused by damage to broca"s area: inferior left frontal lobe.
