Journal of Neurology & Neurophysiology

The Functional Neuroanatomy of Language

Divyansh Mittal^{* *}Correspondence: Divyansh Mittal, Editorial office Journal of Neurology and Neurophysiology, Brussels, Belgium, Email:

Author info »

Introduction

Over the last several years, significant progress has been made in understanding parts of the functioning neuroanatomy of language. This review summarises some of these advancements. It will be argued that the superior temporal lobe is involved in phonological-level aspects of speech recognition bilaterally, that the superior temporal sulcus is involved in phonological-level aspects of this process bilaterally, that the frontal/ motor system is not central to speech recognition despite the fact that it may modulate auditory perception of speech, that conceptual access mechanisms are likely located in the lateral posterior temporal lobe, and that speech production involves sensory-relate mechanisms. This sensorymotor circuit is remarkably similar to sensory-motor circuits found in the parietal lobe of primates, and verbal short-term memory may be seen as an emergent trait of this sensory-motor circuit. These findings are interpreted in the context of a dual-stream speech processing paradigm, in which one channel promotes speech comprehension and the other supports sensorymotor integration. The functional organisation of the planum temporale for spatial hearing and speech-related sensory-motor processes, the anatomical and functional basis of a type of acquired language disorder, conduction aphasia, the neural basis of vocabulary development, and sentence-level/grammatical processing are some of the other topics that will be discussed. Using a long-lag priming paradigm, the current study studied the neurological correlates of morphological priming in overt Dutch language production. Compound words were read aloud as primes that were morphologically related to picture names (for example, the word jaszak, 'coat pocket,' was used for a picture of a coat; Dutch jas) or primes that were form-related but not morphologically related monomorphemic words (for example, jasmijn, 'jasmine'). The morphologically similar compounds might be semantically transparent (e.g. eksternest,'magpie nest') or opaque (e.g. eksteroog, lit.'magpie eye,' 'corn,' for a picture of a magpie, Dutch ekster) or opaque (e.g. eksteroog, lit.'magpie eye,' 'corn,' for a picture of a magpie, Dutch eks Two matched, unrelated priming conditions were added to these four priming circumstances. The generation of morphologically related, complicated words assisted later picture identification, but not the production of form-related terms. Also, in the left inferior frontal gyrus, morphologically relevant but not formrelated words resulted in a neural priming effect (LIFG). Transparent and opaque relationships have the same results. In contrast to prior metaanalytic findings, the data suggest that LIFG plays a functional role in morphological information processing during language generation. Morphological priming effects in language creation, in particular, appear to be independent of semantic overlap. However, further study is needed to demonstrate the morphological and phonological elements' independence. LIFG is thought to help in word form encoding in language creation.

Language is a trait of all humans, and it is made up mostly of organised sequences of words, which serve as the building blocks of sentences. Words, in turn, are frequently made up of organised morpheme sequences. The former are described in morphology, which deals with the internal structure of words; the latter are detailed in syntax. It is critical to understand the structure of morphologically complicated words in order to build meaning. When hearing the word "worthless," for example, the listener can use the morphological structure adjective + suffix to deduce that "worthless" refers to something of no value. When hearing "worth less" (e.g., in a comparative sentence; "X is worth less than Y"), the listener should interpret the utterance as an expression of relative value referring to two entities denoted by X and Y.

The functional neuroanatomical correlates of morphological priming in overt language production are of particular interest to us. Compound words (for example, coat + pocket) are made up of free morphemes that have an internal structure. Such compounds were utilised to fuel the process of identifying pictures in Dutch, an Indo-European language, in the current study. The internal structure is hierarchical in that the morphosyntactic properties and semantic category of the whole compound are determined by one constituent morpheme, the final in Dutch. A key concern was if and where morphological overlap between compound words and image names might affect picture naming in the human brain. There is no work that we are aware of that uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate morphological compound processing in speaking. Conceptual preparation, lexical access, phonological processing, and articulation are regarded to be the four fundamental cognitive processes involved in language creation. While identifying an image, conceptual preparation refers to the activation of ideas related to the intended utterancefor example, the notion of the portrayed item when naming a picture. The activation of linked lexical representations is disseminated by the conceptual activation. Then comes the word form encoding, which involves processing the phonological information required for speech. Finally, by bringing up the associated gestural scores, the phonological word form is employed for articulation. It has been proposed that the creation of morphologically complicated words is not envisaged as a single piece. Rather, they are organised in a sequential manner, one morpheme after another. The decompositional concept of word creation is the synthesis of complex words from individually stored morphemes (or word stems in the case of compounds), and it has been claimed to be solely morphological, that is, without the addition of semantic information. Other researchers, in contrast to the decompositional theory, claimed that morphologically complex words are stored and retrieved as entire units rather than being built from their constituent morphemes during speech.

Analysis of the data

Six word–picture combinations were eliminated from the behavioural analyses because more than half of the participants wrongly replied to these photographs. The factor Prime Type was included in repeated measurement ANOVAs for by-participant (F1) and by-item (F2) image naming latencies. By-participant (t1) and by-item (t2) t-tests were used to assess differences in mean RTs. Where applicable, original degrees of freedom and Greenhouse-Geisser adjusted p-values are supplied. The trials with erroneous replies (9.8%) were not included in the analysis.

An examination of the entire brain

Furthermore, a whole-brain study was carried out at a lower threshold to see if the priming conditions engaged distinct areas of the brain. The random effects analysis findings were thresholded at p 0.01 in this study (uncorrected). To achieve a corrected alpha level of 0.05 at the cluster level with this intensity threshold, an active cluster would need to have 1350 neighbouring voxels.