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Related Concept Videos

Higher Mental Functions of the Brain: Language01:10

Higher Mental Functions of the Brain: Language

Language is a system of communication that allows the expression of thoughts, ideas, and feelings. The brain processes language in both hemispheres.
Language formation and comprehension take place in the dominant hemisphere. The dominant hemisphere is responsible for understanding the meaning of spoken, written, or sign language, as well as the ability to communicate. For most people, the left hemisphere is the dominant one. The right hemisphere, then, gives tone and emotional context to the...
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Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.
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Related Experiment Video

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Morphology, language and the brain: the decompositional substrate for language comprehension.

William D Marslen-Wilson1, Lorraine K Tyler

  • 1MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge CB2 7EF, UK. w.marslen-wilson@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences
|March 31, 2007
PubMed
Summary

This study reveals a brain network for processing English word forms, crucial for understanding language structure. This neurocognitive model explains how the brain parses complex words, supporting a decompositional approach to language.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Linguistics
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Investigates neurocognitive underpinnings of human language processing.
  • Focuses on inflectional morphology and grammatical function in English.
  • Examines deficits in patients with left hemisphere damage.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To propose a neurocognitive model for processing regularly inflected English words.
  • To identify the brain regions and pathways involved in morpho-phonological parsing.
  • To provide evidence for a decompositional approach to language.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of patients with selective deficits in regular inflectional morphology.
  • Neuroimaging study using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on unimpaired adults.
  • Investigated early and automatic segmentation of morphologically complex words.

Main Results:

  • Identified a core decompositional network involving left inferior frontal cortex, temporal cortex, and the arcuate fasciculus.
  • Demonstrated that regularly inflected words undergo morpho-phonological parsing, not whole-form storage.
  • Confirmed early and automatic segmentation for both inflectional and derivational forms.

Conclusions:

  • The findings support a decompositional substrate for human language processing.
  • A specific neural network is responsible for parsing complex word forms.
  • Grammatical morphemes play a significant role in language segmentation.