Language center

With language center (actually language centers, including: Broca's area, Wernicke's area ), the areas are designated in the brain, which play a special role in language processing and production.

Ongoing Research

With new functional imaging methods such as PET and fMRI can produce images that show areas and their activation status in the living brain. Earlier, the research was based primarily on deficits in damage to the cerebral cortex. Thus, the exploration of the areas of speech processing has undergone a radical change. It is now known that a number of relatively widely distributed areas involved in language processing. In recent research is also subcortical, ie below the cerebral cortex in the core area lying areas such as the putamen and caudate nucleus, and premotor ( BA 6 ) regions given increasing attention. More generally, is currently assumed that in addition to the primary and secondary auditory processing areas, the following structures of the cerebral cortex play an important role in language processing:

• Superior temporal gyrus (STG ): Morphosyntactic processing ( anterior portion), integration of syntactic and semantic information ( posterior portion)
• Inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, Brodmann area (BA ) 45/47 ): Set Semantic processing, working memory
• Inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, BA 44): Syntactic processing, working memory
• Temporal gyrus medius (MTG ): Word Semantic Processing

The areas of the left cerebral hemisphere are involved in right-handers mainly, with bilateral activations are not uncommon especially in the area of syntactic processing. It is presently believed that the right hemisphere has an important role in the processing of acoustic features suprasegmental as prosody.

Most language processing areas are formed in the second year of life in the language-dominant hemisphere ( hemisphere ) that the " handedness " is not necessarily opposed. At 98 per cent of the right- left hemisphere in the plurality of left-handed is dominant, too.

Older models

The long before the advent of functional imaging method assumed time differentiation in only two large-scale language processing areas ( Broca's or Wernicke's area ) is considered obsolete. The Broca's area was first in 1861 attributed a role in linguistic features of the French neurologist Paul Broca and anthropologists. Basis of this discovery was the research of speech problems after damage in this brain region, which is located in the lower Stirnhirnwindung. Lesions of Broca's area primarily result in disorders of speech production. Damage to the Wernicke's area, located in the upper portion of the temporal lobe, on the other hand mainly lead to disorders of speech reception. It is named after the German physician Carl Wernicke, who discovered it in 1874 in the study of aphasia ( loss of language skills ).

This closer Broca's area is still considered important language center, are processed in the syntax, grammar and sentence structure.

Already in these early research so it could be shown that the content and structure of language processing takes place in different brain areas.