Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that are involved in language comprehension, production, and acquisition. It is an interdisciplinary field that uses techniques such as neuroimaging, electrophysiology, and lesion studies to investigate topics such as the localization of language processes in the brain, the time course of language processing, and experimental paradigms involving language tasks. Some important early figures in the field were Broca, who linked expressive language ability to the left inferior frontal gyrus, and Wernicke, who discovered a link between understanding language and the left temporal lobe.

1. NEUROLINGUISTICS

2. NEUROLINGUISTICS
Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural mechanisms in
the human brain that control the comprehension, production,
and acquisition of language.
Harry Whitaker, who founded the Journal of
Neurolinguistics in 1985
PET, fMRI, EEG, MEG help to find the language related
brain activity in normal individual
An interdisciplinary field, such as neuroscience,
linguistics, cognitive science, neurobiology, communication
disorders, neuropsychology, and computer science.

3. LOCALIZATIONS OF LANGUAGE PROCESSES (AREOLOGY)

4. Investigated the locations of specific language "modules" within t
he brain.
What course language information follows through the brain as
it is processed.
Whether or not particular areas specialize in processing
particular sorts of information.
How different brain regions interact with one another in
language processing.
How the locations of brain activation differs when a subject is
producing or perceiving a language other than his or her first
language

5. TIME COURSE OF LANGUAGE PROCESSES
The use
of electrophysiological technique
s to analyze the rapid processing
of language in time.
The temporal ordering of
specific peaks in brain
activity may reflect discrete
computational processes that the
brain undergoes during language
processing.
E.g. one neurolinguistic theory of
sentence parsing proposes that
three brain responses
(the ELAN, N400, and P600) are
products of three different steps
in syntactic and semantic
processing

6. NEUROLINGUISTICS METHODS
Lesion studies
Neuroanatomy
Stimulation studies
Neuroimaging
Electrophysiology
Psycholiguistics
Language Pathology

7. EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGMS
Mismatch paradigm
Violation-based
Priming
Stimulation
Subject tasks
Lexical decision
Grammaticality judgment, acceptability judgment
Probe verification
Truth-value judgment
Active distraction and double-task

8. HISTROY
William Wunddt: Founder
of experimental
psychology. Language as
mechanism to transform
thought into sentence
Gall: Phrenology
Broca : First case of
expressive aphasia
Wernikes: First case of
comprehension aphasia

9. LANGUAGE AREA IN PHRENOLOGY

10. BROCA‘S APHASIA
He made a famous statement that ―we speak with the left
hemisphere‖
1. language articulation lies the third frontal convolution of the
inferior frontal gyros;
2. there is left hemisphere dominance in language articulation;
3. understanding language is a different cognitive task than
producing it.

11. WERNICKE’S APHASIA
Ten years later, Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist, discovered
another part of the brain, this one involved in understanding
language, in the posterior portion of the left temporal lobe.
People who had a lesion at this location could speak, but their
speech was often incoherent and made no sense

12. The Aphasic Symptom complex (1874)
language processing is distributed in the brain, which is the central
idea of most current cognitive models. He also made the correct
prediction that patients with damage in the accurate fasciculus would
not be able to repeat speech sounds, a dysfunction later named as
Conduction aphasia.

13. CORTICAL MAPPING OF THE LANGUAGE AREAS IN THE
LEFT CEREBRAL CORTEX DURING NEUROSURGERY
(A) Location of the classical language areas.
(B) Evidence for the variability of language representation among
individuals.
The number in each circle indicates the percentage of the patients
who showed interference with language in response to stimulation at
that site.

14. THANK YOU