Blumstein S.E. When Words Betray Us: Language, the Brain, and Aphasia

Springer, 2022. — 137 p.This book presents a journey into how language is put together for speaking and understanding and how it can come apart when there is injury to the brain. The goal is to provide a window into language and the brain through the lens of aphasia, a speech and language disorder resulting from brain injury in adults. This book answers the question of how the brain analyzes the pieces of language, its sounds, words, and meaning, and ultimately puts them together into a unitary whole. While its major focus is on clinical, experimental, and theoretical approaches to language deficits in aphasia, it integrates this work with recent technological advances in neuroimaging to provide a state-of-the-art portrayal of language and brain function. It also shows how current computational models that share properties with those of neurons allow for a common framework to explain how the brain processes language and its parts and how it breaks down according to these principles. Consideration will also be given to whether language can recover after brain injury or when areas of the brain recruited for speaking, understanding, or reading are deprived of input, as seen with people who are deaf or blind. No prior knowledge of linguistics, psychology, computer science, or neuroscience is assumed. The informal style of this book makes it accessible to anyone with an interest in the complexity and beauty of language and who wants to understand how it is put together, how it comes apart, and how language maps onto the brain.Getting Started.
The Study of Aphasia The Breakdown of Language.
Some Preliminaries.
Aphasia Syndromes.
Broca’s Aphasia.
Wernicke’s Aphasia.
Summary of Clinical Syndromes.
A Brief Introduction to the Brain.
Lesion Localization in Broca’s and Wernicke’s Aphasia.
Some Caveats on the Neural Localization of Syndromes.
The Components of Language Putting Language Together.
Interactivity Information Flow in the Network.
When Language Meets Brain.
Ready to Go.Readings of Interest.
What’s Right and What’s Wrong with Speech Sounds.
The Sounds of Language.
Saying What You Want to Say Speech Production.
The Speech Network.
Where Sound Substitution Errors Come from.
Speech Production Differences Between Broca’s and Wernicke’s Aphasia.
The Devil is in the Details.
Planning Before We Speak.
Listen to Me Speech by Ear.
Perceiving the Differences Between Sounds of Language.
Can You Understand if You Have a Speech Perception Deficit?
What Does it All Mean?Readings of Interest.
Words, Words, and More Words The Mental Lexicon.
What’s in a Name? Naming Deficits in Aphasia.
Network Architecture of the Lexicon.
Where Naming Errors Come from.
Naming in Aphasia.
It’s Right There on the Tip of My Tongue And It Is!
Recognizing Words.
The Eyes Have It.
One More Word.Readings of Interest.
Putting Words Together Syntax.
Structure in the Strings.
Problems with Grammar in Aphasia Sentence Production.
Agrammatism around the World.
Problems with Grammar Wernicke’s Aphasia.
Problems with Grammar in Aphasia Sentence Comprehension.
Following the Clues What Goes Wrong with Syntax in Aphasia.
The End of the Story.
Vive la Difference.Readings of Interest.
Why Two Hemispheres The Role of the Right Hemisphere in Language.
Aphasia and the Right Hemisphere.
Beyond Sounds, Words, and Syntax.
The Two Sides of the Brain Need Each Other.
Split-Brain Patients.
A Brief Interlude on Brain Neuroanatomy.
Language Processing in the Split Brain.
A Radical Procedure.
It’s Still a Puzzle.Readings of Interest.
The Plastic Brain.
Language Plasticity After Brain Injury.
Speaking by Hand and Listening by Eye Sign Language.
Reading by Touch Language and the Brain in the Blind.Readings of Interest.
Beyond Aphasia What More Do We Know.
Distributed Neural Systems in Language.
Functional Differences within Neural Areas Processing Language.
Representations for the Sounds of Language Reaffirming What We Know.
The Right Hemisphere and Language Still a Puzzle.
There Is a Method to Our Madness.
It Depends.Readings of Interest.
A Message of Hope.
The Many Stories of Aphasia Meeting Challenges Head-On.
A Program to Recovery.
Never Give Up.
Words and Music.
Insight.
A Working Agenda for the Future.
From Bench to Bedside.
Therapy Programs Based on Basic Science Findings.
Mapping Neural Changes in the Most Effective Therapy Programs.
Let’s Finally Figure Out the Right Hemisphere.
The Circle Closes.Readings of Interest.