Speech

 Speech Production and Comprehension:
 The physiology of language has been obtained primarily by observing the effects of brain lesions on people's verbal
behavior. Most been made on people who have suffered strokes.
 The most important category of speech disorders is aphasia.
- A primary disturbance in the comprehension or production of speech, caused by brain damage.
 This difficulty must not be caused by simple sensory or motor deficits or by lack of motivation.
- For example, inability to speak caused by deafness or paralysis of the speech muscles is not considered to be aphasia.
 Lateralization
 Verbal behavior is a lateralized function
 Most language disturbances occur after damage to the left side of the brain, whether people are left-handed or right-handed.
 The left hemisphere is dominant for speech in 90% of total population.
 Experiment was done found that right-hemisphere speech dominance was seen in only 4% of right-handed people, in 15% of
both handed people and in 27 % of left-handed people.
 Why is one hemisphere specialized for speech?
 left hemisphere are more specialized for
 The analysis of sequences of stimuli, occurring one after the other.
 The right hemisphere is more
specialized for the analysis of space and geometrical,
shapes and forms, elements which are all present at the same time.
 And as Speech is sequential; it consisting of sequences of
words, which are composed of sequences of sounds.
 Therefore, the left hemisphere has become specialized at perceiving speech.
 Role of right hemisphere in speech

 Damage to the right hemisphere makes it difficult for a person to read maps, perceive spatial relationships, and recognize
complex geometrical forms; they have problems talking about them or understanding what other people say about them.
 Right hemisphere is involved in organizing a narrative, assembling the elements of what we want to say.
 It is involved in the expression and recognition of emotion in the tone of voice.
 It is also involved in control of prosody the normal rhythm and stress found in speech.
 Speech Production
Being able to talk to produce meaningful speech requires several abilities:
 First, the person must have something to talk about.
 (Either something that is currently happening or something that happened in the past.
- In the first case we are talking about our' perceptions: things we are seeing, hearing and feeling.
- In the second case we are talking about our memories of what happened in the past.
 Both perceptions of current events, memories of involve brain mechanisms in the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres
(the occipital, temporal, and parietal lobes) (posterior language area)
 Second, actually saying it.
 Which requires some additional brain functions.
 The conversion of perceptions, memories, and thoughts into speech occurs by brain mechanisms in the frontal lobes.
Arcuate Fasciculus
 Broca's area (speech production)
 Site: The inferior left frontal lobe
 Function:
 Broca's area contains motor memories
 Memories of the sequences of muscular movement that are needed to articulate
words. (program)
 Talking involves rapid movements of the tongue, lips, and jaw, and these movements must
be coordinated with each other and with those of the vocal cords.
 Neurons in Broca's area when activated cause these sequences of movements to be
executed.
 By its direct connection to the part of the primary motor cortex that controls the muscles
used for speech.
Broca's aphasia (expressive aphasia)
 Damage: Broca's area disrupts the ability to speak.

 Symptoms:
People with Broca's aphasia can comprehend speech much better than they can produce it.
 Writing tends to be impaired analogously to speech output, but reading ability may be only mildly
impaired.
 This disorder is characterized by slow, laborious, and nonfluent speech.
 Although they often mispronounce words, the ones they manage to come out with are usually meaningful.
 The posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres has something to say, but the damage to the frontal lobe
makes it difficult for these patients to express these thoughts.
 Three major speech deficits are produced by lesions in and around Broca's area:
 On the lowest, most elementary level is control of the sequence of movements of the muscles of speech:
o damage to this ability leads to articulation difficulties patients mispronounce words, often altering the sequence of
sounds.
o For example, lipstick might be pronounced ‘’likstip’’
 The next higher level is selection of the particular 'programs" for individual words:
o Damage to this ability leads to anomia-a word-finding difficulty.
o When trying to talk with patients who have Broca's aphasia, most people
find it hard to resist supplying the words the patients are obviously groping for correct word.
 Finally the highest level is selection of grammatical structure, including word order, use of function words
(such as a, the, some, in, or about):
o Damage to this ability leads to agrammtism.
o The words that they do manage to say are almost entirely content words
that convey meaning, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, (such as apple, house, or heavy)
o They recognize that their pronunciation is erroneous and they usually try to correct them.
 Wernicke's area (speech recognition)

 Comprehension of speech begins in the auditory system which detects and analyzes sounds.
 First I have to recognize words - then to comprehend them - understanding their meaning.
 Function: Recognizing a spoken word, is a perceptual task that relies on memories of sequences of sounds that constitute
the words.
 This task appears to be accomplished by neural circuits in the superior temporal gyrus of the left hemisphere, (Wernicke's
area) which is a region of auditory cortex. (site)
 Damage to this area leads to Wernicke's aphasia.
 Wernicke's aphasia (receptive aphasia)
 They have poor speech comprehension and production of meaningless speech with poor repetition.
 Unlike Broca's aphasia, Wernicke's aphasia is fluent and unlabored.
 The person uses function words and grammar appears to be correct. However, he uses few content words, speech is
meaningless.
 They do not appear to recognize that their speech is faulty, nor can they recognize that they cannot understand the speech
of others.
 Symptoms: The abilities that are disrupted include recognition of spoken words, comprehension of the meaning of words,
and the ability to convert thoughts into words .
 Pure word deafness: (recognition)

 Disruption of auditory input to Wernicke's area or damage to Wernicke's area itself.
 Disruption of auditory input can be produced by bilateral damage to the primary auditory cortex, or it can be caused by
damage to the axons bringing auditory information from the primary auditory cortex.
 Disturbance in the analysis of the sounds of words and hence lead to the inability to comprehend speech
 Although they aren’t deaf, they cannot understand speech. “I can hear you talking, I just can't understand what you are
saying’’.
 These patients can recognize nonspeech sounds such as the barking of a dog, they can recognize the emotion expressed
by the intonation of speech
 Their own speech is excellent, Yet impaired repetition.
 They can often read lips
 Comprehension: Transcortical Sensory Aphasia.
 Tran’s cortical sensory aphasia can be seen as Wernicke's aphasia without a repetition deficit. To put it another way, the
symptoms of Wernicke's aphasia (WA) consist of those of pure word deafness (PWD) plus of transcortical sensory aphasia
(TSA). WA = TSA + PWD). TSA =WA – PWD and so on.
 Dictionaries contain entries (the words) and definitions (the meanings of the words).
 In the brain we have at least two types of entries: auditory and visual. That is, we can look up a word according to how" It
sounds or how it looks (in writing). And search for its meaning in the stored memories in associations areas.
 There are pathways connecting the speech mechanisms of the left temporal lobe with those of left the frontal lobe.
 The direct pathway through the arcuate fasciculus simply conveys speech sounds from Wernicke's area to broca's area.
- That’s why patients with transcortical sensory aphasia can repeat words.
 Second pathway, between the posterior language area and broca's area, is indirect and is based on the meaning of words,
 Repetition: Conduction Aphasia.
not the sounds they make.
 There is a direct connection between Wernicke's area and broca's area— arcuate fasciculus.
 This bundle of axons conveys information about the sounds of words but not their meaning.
 We use this pathway to repeat unfamiliar words
Ex: when we are learning a foreign language or a new word in our own language.
 Damage to arcuate fasciculus lead to conduction aphasia: It is characterized by meaningful fluent speech;
relatively good comprehension (spoken or written); but very poor repetition.
 When they hear a word or a sentence, the meaning of what they hear evokes some sort of image related to
that meaning. (The patient imagined the sight of an automobile leaking fuel oil onto the pavement.)
 They are then able to describe that image, just as they would put their own thoughts into words. Not the
same wording mentioned to him, When patient asked to repeat the sentence
 Prosody
 Our speech has a regular rhythm and tone; we give some words stress (that is, we pronounce them louder), and we vary
the pitch of our voice to indicate phrasing and to distinguish between assertions and questions.
 In addition, we can impart information about our emotional state through the rhythm, emphasis, and tone of our speech.
 These aspects of speech are referred to as prosody.
 Prosody is a special function of the right hemisphere which has role in production as well as perception of prosody
(recognition).
 It is normal in Wernicke's aphasia.
 How meanings of words are acquired and stored??

 Words refer to objects, actions, or relationships in the world. Thus, the meaning of a word is defined by particular memories
associated with it.
 For example, knowing the meaning of the word tree means being able to imagine the physical characteristics.
 It also means knowing facts about trees: about their roots, wood and their leaves, these memories are stored not in the
primary speech areas but in other parts of the brain, especially regions of the association cortex. So hearing the word tree
activates all of them.

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 Speech Production and Comprehension:

 Role of right hemisphere in speech

Broca's aphasia (expressive aphasia)

 Damage: Broca's area disrupts the ability to speak.

 Wernicke's area (speech recognition)

 Pure word deafness: (recognition)

 How meanings of words are acquired and stored??

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