Towards a new neurobiology of language

Abstract

Theoretical advances in language research and the availability of increasingly high-resolution experimental techniques in the cognitive neurosciences are profoundly changing how we investigate and conceive of the neural basis of speech and language processing. Recent work closely aligns language research with issues at the core of systems neuroscience, ranging from neurophysiological and neuroanatomic characterizations to questions about neural coding. Here we highlight, across different aspects of language processing (perception, production, sign language, meaning construction), new insights and approaches to the neurobiology of language, aiming to describe promising new areas of investigation in which the neurosciences intersect with linguistic research more closely than before. This paper summarizes in brief some of the issues that constitute the background for talks presented in a symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. It is not a comprehensive review of any of the issues that are discussed in the symposium.

Figures

Figure 1.

A, The classical brain language model, ubiquitous but no longer viable. From Geschwind (1979). With permission of Scientific American. B, The dorsal and ventral stream model of speech sound processing. From Hickok and Poeppel (2007). With permission from Nature Publishing Group.

Figure 2.

The anatomic organization of Broca's region. From Amunts et al. (2010). With permission of the Public Library of Science.

Figure 3.

Computational and functional anatomic analysis of speech production. From Hickok (2012). With permission from Nature Publishing Group.

Figure 4.

A, Generation of “pantomimic” signs by deaf signers engaged left IFG (inferior frontal gyrus), but production of similar pantomimes by hearing non-signers did not. D, Lexical “pantomimic” signs shown in B activate the anterior temporal lobes, in contrast to less specific classifier constructions shown in C. E, Location and motion classifier constructions activate bilateral parietal cortex, in contrast to lexical signs.