Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T16:37:04.830Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cortical-striatal-cortical neural circuits, reiteration, and the “narrow faculty of language”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Philip Lieberman
Philip Lieberman
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912-1978. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Neural circuits linking local operations in the cortex and the basal ganglia confer reiterative capacities, expressed in seemingly unrelated human traits such as speech, syntax, adaptive actions to changing circumstances, dancing, and music. Reiteration allows the formation of a potentially unbounded number of sentences from a finite set of syntactic processes, obviating the need for the hypothetical “Narrow Faculty of Language.”

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 5 , October 2008 , pp. 527 - 528
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Chomsky, N. (1957) Syntactic structures. Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1995) The minimalist program. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cools, R., Barker, R. A., Sahakian, G. H. & Robbins, R. W. (2001) Mechanisms of cognitive set flexibility in Parkinson's disease. Brain 124:2503–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cummings, J. L. (1993) Frontal-subcortical circuits and human behavior. Archives of Neurology 50:873–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Darwin, C. (1859/1964) On the origin of species. (Facsimile edition, 1964). Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Flowers, K. A. & Robertson, C. (1985) The effects of Parkinson's disease on the ability to maintain a mental set. J Neurology, Neurosurgery, Psychiatry 48:517–29.Google Scholar
Graybiel, A. M. (1997) The basal ganglia and cognitive pattern generators. Schizophrenia Bulletin 23:459–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenberg, B. D., Murphy, D. L. & Rasmusen, S. A. (2000) Neuroanatomically based approaches to obsessive-compulsive disorder: Neurosurgery and transcranial magnetic stimulation. The Psychiatric Clinics of North America 23:671–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grossman, M., Carvell, G. S., Gollumb, S., Stern, M. B., Reivich, M., Morrison, D., Aalavi, A. & Hurti, H. L. (1993) Cognitive and physiological substrates of impaired sentence processing in Parkinson's disease. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 5:480–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grossman, M., Carvell, G. S., Gollomb, S., Stern, M. B., Vernon, G. & Hurtig, H. I. (1991) Sentence comprehension and praxis deficits in Parkinson's disease. Neurology 41:1620–28.Google ScholarPubMed
Hauser, M. D., Chomsky, N. & Fitch, W. T. (2002) The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298(5598):1569–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Illes, J. E., Metter, J., Hanson, W. R. & Iritani, S. (1988) Language production in Parkinson's disease: Acoustic and linguistic considerations. Brain and Language 33:146–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jellinger, K. (1990) New developments in the pathology of Parkinson's disease. In: Parkinson's disease: Anatomy, pathology and therapy. Advances in Neurology, vol. 53, ed. Streifler, M. B., Korezyn, A. D., Melamed, J. & Youdim, M. B. H., pp. 1–15. Raven Press.Google Scholar
Klein, D., Zatorre, R. J., Milner, B., Meyer, E. & Evans, A. C. (1994) Left putaminal activation when speaking a second language: Evidence from PET. NeuroReport 5:2295–97.Google Scholar
Kotz, S. A., Meyer, M., Alter, K., Besson, M., Von Cramon, D. Y. & Frederici, A. (2003) On the lateralization of emotional prosody: An fMRI investigation. Brain and Language 96: 366–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lai, C. S. L., Gerrelli, D., Monaco, A. P., Fisher, S. E. & Copp, A. J. (2003) FOXP2 expression during brain development coincides with adult sites of pathology in a severe speech and language disorder. Brain 126:2455–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, K. W., Robbins, T. W., Marsden, C. D., James, M., Owen, A. M. & Paul, G. M. (1992) L-Dopa withdrawal in Parkinson's disease selectively impairs cognitive performance in tests sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction. Psychopharmacology 107:394–404.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lieberman, P. (2000) Human language and our reptilian brain: The subcortical bases of speech, syntax, and thought. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lieberman, P. (2002) On the nature and evolution of the neural bases of human language. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 45:36–62.Google Scholar
Lieberman, P. (2006) Toward an evolutionary biology of language. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lieberman, P., Friedman, J. & Feldman, L. S. (1990) Syntactic deficits in Parkinson's disease. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 178:360–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lieberman, P., Kako, E. T., Friedman, J., Tajhman, G., Feldman, L. S. & Jiminez, E. B. (1992) Speech production, syntax comprehension, and cognitive deficits in Parkinson's disease. Brain and Language 43:169–89.Google Scholar
Lieberman, P., Morey, A., Hochstadt, J., Larson, M. & Mather, S. (2005) Mount Everest: A space-analog for speech monitoring of cognitive deficits and stress. Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine 76:198–207.Google Scholar
Monchi, O., Petrides, P., Perre, V., Worsley, K. & Dagher, A. (2001) Wisconsin card sorting revisited: Distinct neural circuits participating in different stages of the task identified by ecent-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Journal of Neuroscience 21:7733–41.Google Scholar
Natsopolous, D., Grouuios, G., Bostantzopoulou, S., Mentenopouloue, G., Katsarou, Z. & Logothetis, J. (1992) Algorithmic and heuristic strategies in comprehension of complement clauses by patients with Parkinson's disease. Neuropsychologia 31:951–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rissman, J., Eliasesen, J. C. & Blumstein, S. E. (2003) An event-related fMRI study of implicit semantic priming. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 15:1160–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stowe, L. A., Paans, A. M.-J., Wijers, A. A. & Zwarts, F. (2004) Activation of “motor” and other non-language structures during sentence comprehension. Brain and Language 89:290–99.Google Scholar
Vargha-Khadem, F., Watkins, K. E., Price, C. J., Ashbruner, J., Alcock, K. J., Connelly, A., Frackowiak, R. S., Friston, K. J., Pembrey, M. E., Mishkin, M., Gadian, D. G. & Passingham, R. E. (1998) Neural basis of an inherited speech and language disorder. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 95:12695–700.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed