The document discusses the history of understanding the relationship between language and the brain. It describes early theories such as dualism which viewed the mind and body as separate. It then outlines key figures like Broca and Wernicke who through studying brain damage cases established that language production and comprehension are handled by distinct brain regions. More recent neuroscientists like Poeppel and Friederici study these language areas and how they interact using modern techniques like analyzing neuronal oscillations. The document traces the progression of the field from early philosophies to current models integrating linguistics and neuroscience.

1. The talking Brain
LCD 105 - Class 5 - Professor Nathacia

2. Ok.. we now have a (partial)
definition for Language
• Abstract reality that is socially-based, individually-based
AND specifically-based;
• It is a Faculty of the mind;
• It is a cognition.

3. Cognition?
• Oxford: the mental action or process of acquiring
knowledge and understanding through thought,
experience, and the senses
• Psychological Glossary: All the mental activities
associated with thinking, knowing, and remembering. As
you can tell, any of your ideas, thoughts, memories, etc.,
are all types of cognitive processes. What you are doing
(reading and learning this explanation) is a type of
cognition.

4. Houston, we have a problem…

5. Dualism
Mind and Body are to completely
independent things.
Descartes: Mind is non-physical - and
therefore, non-spacial - substance.
The mental can exist outside the body.

6. Dualism
Mind and Body are to completely
independent things.
Descartes: Mind is non-physical - and
therefore, non-spacial - substance.
The mental can exist outside the body.
Problem: How to explain non-physical
substance causing physical events?

7. Materialism
There is no mind actually. Everything is physical.
What we call mind is actually an epiphenomenon of physical
interactions.
Radical Behaviorism: mind is an epiphenomenon of stimuli-
response relations.
Problem: It doesn't explain mental causes as knowledge,
expectation and beliefs.
Logical Behaviorism: mind is an epiphenomenon of logical
relations between a stimulus and a response.
Problem: it just explain mental causes in a event-event relation.
What happens if there’s no reason for a change of mind?
Central-State Identity: mind is an epiphenomenon of neurons
arrangement / circuits.

9. By Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58036467
The interest for what is inside the head
goes back many thousands years BC
Trepanning or Trepanation
Surgical intervention
(alive people) in which a
hole was drilled or
scraped into a skull

10. Hippocrates
Actually the brain is the
organ of the mind (major
controlling center)

11. Hippocrates and Galenus
Actually the brain is the
organ of the mind (major
controlling center)
Mental activity occurs in
the brain.

12. Franz Joseph Gall
Organology: the isolation of mental faculties.
Cranioscopy: reading the skull's shape.
Phrenology

14. Phrenology
Problems:

15. Phrenology
Problems:

16. Phrenology
Positive aspects:
Localization
Hypothesis
Isolation of
mental faculties

17. Phineas Gage and the
Localization Hypothesis

23. Back to relating anatomy
and cognition
Pierre Paul Broca 1860

24. Back to relating anatomy
and cognition
Pierre Paul Broca 1860

25. Back to relating anatomy
and cognition
Pierre Paul Broca 1860

27. https://youtu.be/6CJWo5TDHLE

28. Broca’s aphasia
Pierre Paul Broca
Problems with production of closed class words
No problems of comprehension
Prosody not affected (or most part of it)
Principal conclusion:
Language Production and Language
Comprehension are (anatomically and
physiologically) distinct.

29. A different type of disorder
Karl Wernicke

31. https://youtu.be/3oef68YabD0

32. Wernicke’s aphasia
Karl Wernicke
Problems with comprehension
Problems in making sense (semantics)
No problems of articulation or speech production
(in the matter of Phonetics, phonology,
morphology or syntax - in certain extent)
Principal conclusion (confirmed):
Language Production and Language
Comprehension are (anatomically and
physiologically) distinct.

33. Production x Articulation
Wilder Graves Penfield
Cortical Homunculus

37. ByMagnolia87(Ownwork)[CCBY-SA3.0(https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],viaWikimedia
Commons
Norman Geschwind
Integrating all we know
Language/ Speech anatomy and
physiology by integrating Broca’s area,
Wernicke’s area and the cortexes.
Many medical schools still use this model.

39. When linguistics and
Neuroscience meet
David Poeppel
The functional anatomic model of language
developed with Greg Hickok
Lateralization in auditory processing
Experimental work on the role of neuronal
oscillations in audition and speech perception

41. When linguistics and
Neuroscience meet
Angela Friederici
Neurocognitive Model of Auditory Language
Comprehension
how the processing of syntax and semantics
interacts with other linguistic (phonology,
prosody) and non-linguistic domains (e.g.
memory, emotion, gesture)
Experimental work on the role of neuronal
oscillations in audition and speech perception

42. Friederici (2012): The cortical language circuit: from auditory perception to sentence
comprehension
http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(12)00079-4