Language and Brain-Language Areas and Their Functioning

The Hemispheres of the Brain

The general structure of the brain is that of a whole which is divided into vertical halves which seem to be mirror images of one another. It looks much like a walnut with the two parts joined around the middle, except there is little space between the two halves in the real brain. Each half of the brain is called a hemisphere. There is a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere.The hemispheres come out of the brain stem, which connects to the spinal cord. the following is brief illustration of Hemispheres of the Brain.

Language Areas and their Functioning

• Broca’s area is for the motoric area, and speech production ==> where our speech production is managed in this broca’s area.
• Wernicke’s area is the auditory area, and speech understanding/comprehension ==> place where the the speech understanding or comprehension in language area.

Why is it called Broca’s Area…??

Pierre Paul Broca was a French pathologist and neurosurgeon (1824-1880) who made the first great discovery regarding brain and language. He discovered a certain area that is involved with the production of speech(motoric area=something that moves) namely Broca’s area.

Broca’s Area
Broca noted that the speech area is adjacent to the region of the motor cortex which controls the movement of the muscles of the articulators of speech: the tongue, lips, jaw, soft palate, vocal cords, etc.
He posited that speech is formulated in Broca’s Area and then articulated via the motor area sent to the articulators of speech for vocalization.

Wernicke’s Area
Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist (1848-1905) reasoned that in the same way two other areas of the brain must similarly be involved in the process of speech comprehension. He discovered, near the part of the cortex in the temporal lobe which receives auditory stimuli, an area which was involved in the understanding of speech (Wernicke’s area). According to Wernicke, on hearing a word, the sound of a word goes from the ear to the auditory area and then to Wernicke’s Area. It is from Broca’s Area that the vocalization of speech would then be activated.

ReadingWhen a word is read, according to Wernicke, the information goes from the eyes to the visual area of the cortex in the occipital lobe, from there to angular gyrus, then to Wernicke’s Area and then to Broca’s Area, which causes the auditory form of the word to be activated.