Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Functional localization in the brain with respect to syntactic processing

E Zurif1, D Swinney, P Prather

  • 1Department of Psychology, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
|November 1, 1994
PubMed
Summary

Wernicke's aphasia patients can process sentence structure, but Broca's aphasia patients cannot, regardless of comprehension. This suggests syntactic processing relies on specific brain areas.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Neurological distribution of processing resources underlying language comprehension.

Journal of cognitive neuroscience·2013
Same author

The Effects of Focal Brain Damage on Sentence Processing: an examination of the neurological organization of a mental module.

Journal of cognitive neuroscience·2013
Same author

Control, compare and communicate: designing control charts to summarise efficiently data from multiple quality indicators.

Quality & safety in health care·2005
Same author

A simulated reality scenario compared with the computerized Wisconsin card sorting test: an analysis of preliminary results.

Cyberpsychology & behavior : the impact of the Internet, multimedia and virtual reality on behavior and society·2001
Same author

Brain imaging and language processing--an introduction to special issue papers.

Journal of psycholinguistic research·2001
Same author

Broca's aphasia is associated with a single pattern of comprehension performance: a reply.

Brain and language·2001

Area of Science:

  • Neurolinguistics
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Psycholinguistics

Background:

  • Aphasia, a language disorder resulting from brain damage, affects language production and comprehension.
  • Understanding syntactic processing in aphasia is crucial for localizing language functions in the brain.
  • Previous research has explored various aspects of language deficits in different aphasia types.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the real-time ability of patients with Wernicke's and Broca's aphasia to construct syntactically governed dependency relations.
  • To determine if syntactic processing capabilities are independent of sentence comprehension in aphasic patients.
  • To explore the neural basis of syntactic analysis by examining performance differences between patient groups.

Main Methods:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Real-time examination of syntactic dependency relation construction in aphasic patients (Wernicke's and Broca's).
  • Assessment of patients' ability to link sentence elements regardless of their comprehension level.
  • Comparison of performance between aphasic groups and neurologically intact subjects.

    • Main Results:

    • Wernicke's aphasia patients demonstrated the ability to link dependency relations similarly to neurologically intact subjects, even with uncomprehended sentences.
    • Broca's aphasia patients were unable to create these syntactic links, even when they understood the sentences.
    • These findings highlight a dissociation between syntactic processing and comprehension in aphasia.

    Conclusions:

    • Syntactic analysis is an isolable stage of language processing, potentially localized to specific cortical regions.
    • Comprehension limitations in syntactic terms can be attributed to deficits in localized processing resources.
    • The study provides evidence for distinct neural substrates underlying syntactic construction and semantic comprehension in aphasia.