Chapter 13: HUMAN COMMUNICATION

Chapter Overview

Chapter 13 covers brain mechanisms of speech production and comprehension as well as reading and writing. The notion of brain lateralization is explained in the opening chapter section. Two speech disorders (aphasia) are described: that associated with damage to Broca’s area and that associated with damage to Wernicke’s area. Broca’s syndrome is shown to include problems using function words (but not content words), articulation, and word search. Wernicke’s aphasia is fluent but nonsensical. Prosody refers to changes in intonation and pace that reflect emotional information and is know to involve the right hemisphere. The final chapter section describes disorders of reading including dyslexia (acquired vs. developmental).

After completing the chapter, each student should be able to:

• Describe the characteristics of aphasia.
• Explain the utility of the WADA test for neurosurgeons.
• Describe the brain regions involved in Broca’s aphasia.
• Differentiate between function words and content words.
• Differentiate the three major speech deficits produced by damage and around Broca’s area.
• Describe the role of the cerebellum in speech production.
• Describe the primary characteristics of Wernicke’s aphasia.
• Differentiate between sensory aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia.
• Describe the impact of pure alexia on reading and writing.
• Describe the symptoms of conduction aphasia.
• Explain how it is know that object and word perception involve different brain regions.
• Differentiate between acquired dyslexia’s and developmental dyslexia’s.
• Describe the 5 different forms of acquired dyslexia’s.
• Contrast surface and phonological dyslexia.
• Describe the four means involved in writing.
• Describe whole-word and phonetic reading.
• Contrast the characteristics of phonological dysgraphia and orthographic dysgraphia.
• Explain the evidence lining brain abnormalities to developmental dyslexia.