Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T02:42:35.124Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Aspects of Language Mechanisms: a Hebbian perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Abstract

Language has been assumed to be housed in two small areas in the language-dominant hemisphere. However, because words can refer to actions and objects usually perceived through all modalities, it seemed possible that additional cortical areas may contribute to word processing. Recent investigations of brain activity during word processing indicate that areas outside the language regions do indeed participate in the processing of words. Individual words appear to be organized in the cortex as distributed cell assemblies that comprise neurons in both hemispheres, in the language areas and outside. The areas outside may reflect semantic word properties.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 1997

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

REFERENCES

1.Broca, P. (1861) Remarques sur la siège de la faculté de la parole articulée, suivies d'une observation d'aphémie (perte de parole). Bulletin de la Société d'Anatomie 36, 330357.Google Scholar
2.Lichtheim, L. (1885) Über Aphasie. Deutsches Archiv für Klinische Medicin 36, 204268.Google Scholar
3.Wernicke, C. (1847) Der aphasische Symptomencomplex. Eine psychologische Studie auf anatomischer Basis. Breslau, Kohn und Weigert.Google Scholar
4.Bogen, J. E. and Bogen, G. M. (1976) Wernicke's region—where is it? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280, 834843.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5.Kolk, H. H. J., van Grunsven, J. F. and Keyser, A. (1985) On parallelism between production and comprehension in agrammatism. In Agrammatism. Kean, M.-L. (Ed) pp. 165206. New York, Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
6.De Renzi, E. and Vignolo, L. (1962) The Token Test: a sensitive test to detect receptive disturbances in aphasics. Brain 85, 665678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7.Pulvermüller, F. (1992) Constituents of a neurological theory of language. Concepts in Neuroscience 3, 157200.Google Scholar
8.Hebb, D. O. (1949) The Organization of Behavior. A Neuropsychological Theory. New York, John Wiley.Google Scholar
9.Braitenberg, V. (1978) Cell assemblies in the cerebral cortex. In Theoretical Approaches to Complex Systems. (Lecture notes in biomathematics, vol. 21). Heim, R. and Palm, G. (Eds) pp. 171188. Berlin, Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10.Braitenberg, V. and Schüz, A. (1991) Anatomy of the Cortex. Statistics and geometry. Berlin, Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11.Singer, W. (1995) Development and plasticity of cortical processing architectures. Science 270, 758764.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
12.Palm, G. and Sommer, F. T. (1995) Associative data storage and retrieval in neural networks. In Models of Neural Networks III. Domany, E., van Hemmen, J. L. and Schulten, K. (Eds) pp. 79118. New York, Springer Verlag.Google Scholar
13.Abeles, M., Bergman, H., Margalit, E. and Vaadia, E. (1993) Spatiotemporal firing patterns in the frontal cortex of behaving monkeys. J. Neurophysiology 70, 16291638.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
14.Fuster, J. M. (1994) Memory in the Cerebral Cortex. An Empirical Approach to Neural Networks in the Human and Nonhuman Primate. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.Google Scholar
15.Freud, S. (1891) Zur Auffassung der Aphasien. Leipzig, Wien, Franz Deuticke.Google Scholar
16.Braitenberg, V. (1980) Alcune considerazione sui meccanismi cerebrali del linguaggio. In L'accostamento interdisciplinare allo studio del linguaggio. Braga, G., Braitenberg, V., Cipolli, C., Coseriu, E., Crespi-Reghizzi, S., Mehler, J. and Titone, R. (Eds) pp. 96108. Milano, Franco Angeli Editore.Google Scholar
17.Braitenberg, V. and Pulvermüller, F. (1992) Entwurf einer neurologischen Theorie der Sprache. Naturwissenschaften 79, 103117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18.Rizzolatti, G., Fadiga, L., Gallese, V. and Fogassi, L. (1996) Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. Cognitive Brain Research 3, 131141.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
19.Mohr, B., Pulvermüller, F. and Zaidel, E. (1994) Lexical decision after left, right and bilateral presentation of content words, function words and non-words: evidence for interhemispheric interaction. Neuropsychologia 32, 105124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
20.Pulvermüller, F. and Mohr, B. (1996) The concept of transcortical cell assemblies: a key to the understanding of cortical lateralization and interhemispheric interaction. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 20, 557566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21.Warrington, E. K. and McCarthy, R. A. (1987) Categories of knowledge: further fractionations and an attempted integration. Brain 110, 12731296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22.Damasio, A. R., Damasio, H., Tranel, D. and Brandt, J. P. (1990) Neural regionalization of knowledge access: preliminary evidence. In Cold Spring Harbour Symposia on Quantitative Biology. Vol. LV: The Brain, Cold Spring Harbour, Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory Press.Google Scholar
23.Caramazza, A. and Hillis, A. E. (1991) Lexical organization of nouns and verbs in the brain. Nature 349, 788790.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
24.Damasio, H., Grabowski, T. J., Tranel, D., Hichwa, R. D. and Damasio, A. R. (1996) A neural basis for lexical retrieval. Nature 380, 499505.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
25.Daniele, A., Giustolisi, L., Silveri, M. C., Colosimo, C. and Gainotti, G. (1994) Evidence for a possible neuroanatomical basis for lexical processing of nouns and verbs. Neuropsychologia 32, 13251341.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
26.Warrington, E. K. and Shallice, T. (1984) Category specific semantic impairments. Brain 107, 829854.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
27.Pulvermüller, F. (1996) Hebb's concept of cell assemblies and the psychophysiology of word processing. Psychophysiology 33, 317333.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
28.Garnsey, S. M. (1985) Function Words and Content Words: Reaction Time and Evoked Potential Measures of Word Recognition. Rochester, NY, University of Rochester.Google Scholar
29.Neville, H. J., Mills, D. L. and Lawson, D. S. (1992) Fractionating language: different neural subsystems with different sensitive periods. Cerebral Cortex 2, 244258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
30.Nobre, A. C. and McCarthy, G. (1994) Language-related EPRs: scalp distributions and modulation by word type and semantic priming. J. Cognitive Neuroscience 6, 233255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31.Kreiter, A. K. and Singer, W. (1992) Oscillatory neuronal responses in the visual cortex of the awake macaque monkey. Eur. J. Neuroscience 4, 369375.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
32.McCarthy, G., Blamire, A. M., Rothman, D. L., Gruetter, R. and Shulman, R. G. (1993) Echo-planar magnetic resonance imaging studies of frontal cortex activation during word generation in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 90, 49524956.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
33.Petersen, S., Fox, P., Posner, M., Mintun, M. and Raichle, M. (1989) Positron emission tomography studies of the processing of single words. J. Cognitive Neuroscience 1, 153170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34.Wise, R., Chollet, F., Hadar, U., Fiston, K., Hoffner, E. and Frackowiak, R. (1991) Distribution of cortical neural networks involved in word comprehension and word retrieval. Brain 114, 18031817.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
35.Fiez, J. A., Raichle, M. E., Balota, D. A., Tallal, P. and Petersen, S. E. (1996) PET activation of posterior temporal regions during auditory word presentation and verb generation. Cerebral Cortex 6, 110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
36.Dehaene, S. (1995). Electrophysiological evidence for category-specific word processing in the normal human brain. NeuroReport 6, 21532157.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
37.Preissl, H., Pulvermüller, F., Lutzenberger, W. and Birbaumer, N. (1995) Evoked potentials distinguish nouns from verbs. Neuroscience Letters 197, 8183.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
38.Martin, A., Wiggs, C. L., Ungerleider, L. G. and Haxby, J. V. (1996) Neural correlates of category-specific knowledge. Nature 379, 649652.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
39.Singer, W. and Gray, C. M. (1995) Visual feature integration and the temporal correlation hypothesis. Annual Review in Neuroscience 18, 555586.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
40.Steriade, M., Amzica, F. and Contreras, D. (1996) Synchronization of fast (30–40 Hz) spontaneous cortical rhythms during brain activation. J. Neuroscience 16, 392417.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
41.Lutzenberger, W., Pulvermüller, F. and Birbaumer, N. (1994) Words and pseudowords elicit distinct patterns of 30-Hz activity in humans. Neuroscience Letters 176, 115118.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
42.Pulvermüller, F., Eulitz, C., Pantev, C., Mohr, B., Feige, B., Lutzenberger, W., Elbert, T. and Birbaumer, N. (1996) High-frequency cortical responses reflect lexical processing: an MEG study. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 98, 7685.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
43.Pulvermüller, F., Preissl, H., Lutzenberger, W. and Birbaumer, N. (1995) Spectral responses in the gamma-band: physiological signs of higher cognitive processes? NeuroReport 6, 20572064.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
44.Pulvermüller, F., Preissl, H., Lutzenberger, W. and Birbaumer, N. (1996) Brain rhythms of language: nouns versus verbs. Eur. J. Neuroscience 8, 937941.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
45.Tallon, C., Bertrand, O., Bouchet, P. and Pernier, J. (1995) Gamma-range activity evoked by coherent visual stimuli in humans. Eur. J. Neuroscience 7, 12851291.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
46.Kirschfeld, K. (1992) Oscillations in the insect brain: do they correspond to the cortical gamma-waves of vertebrates? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 89, 47644768.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
47.Neuenschwander, S. and Singer, W. (1996) Long-range synchronization of oscillatory light responses in the cat retina and lateral geniculate nucleus. Nature 379, 728732.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
48.Edelman, G. M. (1992) Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: on the Matter of the Mind. New York, Basic Books.Google Scholar
49.Mesulam, M. M. (1990) Large-scale neurocognitive networks and distributed processing for attention, language, and memory. Annals of Neurology 28, 597613.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
50.Creutzfeldt, O., Ojemann, G and Lettich, E. (1989) Neuronal activity in the human lateral temporal lobe. I. Responses to speech. Experimental Brain Research 77, 451475.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
51.Pulvermüller, F. (1994) Syntax und Hirnmechanismen. Perspektiven einer multidisziplinären Sprachwissenschaft. Kognitionswissenschaft 4, 1731.Google Scholar
52.Pulvermüller, F. and Preissl, H. (1991). A cell assembly model of language. Network 2, 455468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar