Brain Areas that Control Language and Speech – Language (PSY, BIO)

00:01 Now, let’s take a look at damage, because then in our world of psychology and neuroscience, anytime you want to try to understand function, damage is a great way to understand what happens if you remove the ability of that brain structure to work correctly.

00:15 So, one area that we’re going to look at is Broca’s area.

00:17 So it’s located in the left hemisphere of the frontal lobe.

00:20 It’s indicated here as you can see.

00:22 And it’s involved in the complicated process of speech production.

00:26 So, actually, expressing what you want to say and put in the words together.

00:30 So, you can have injury or a disorder called “Broca’s aphasia” where you actually lose the ability to speak.

00:37 So, you know, what you want to say but you’re unable to communicate it.

00:41 And it’ll come out as grunts or, you know, weird phonetic sounds but they don’t actually mean anything.

00:47 So, you’ll see this in times where there’s stroke or trauma to the brain.

00:52 They’ve damaged Broca’s area and, you know, the poor patient is quite frustrated because they’re trying to say something and all comes across is kind of grunts and moans.

01:01 Now, another area that’s of interest is Wernicke’s area.

01:04 This is located in the posterior section of the temporal lobe in the dominant hemisphere.

01:10 So, we all have one dominant hemisphere.

01:12 And for most, it’s actually the left hemisphere.

01:16 So in that area, the Wernicke’s area found there, if it’s involved in some kind of damage, you see some deficiency.

01:23 So normally, this area is involved in the comprehension of speech and written language.

01:29 So, understanding what you’re saying and being able to write, a lot of times, what you’re thinking.

01:35 So, Wernicke’s aphasia or also known as receptive aphasia is loss of the ability to produce intelligible, meaningful speech.

01:43 Now you can actually say words, but the content of what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense.

01:48 You’ll say words that kind of don’t go together.

01:50 You’ll be like, “Tomorrow, tomato, car, urination, underwear.” And you’re kind of like, “Well, none of those kind of makes any sense.” Again, they have the ability to speak, but what they’re saying, the content, is lacking.

02:04 So, we’ve kind of walk through the different ways that we acquire language.

02:08 We’ve looked at how that set up.

02:10 We looked at cultural differences and then we tied it all together by looking at the parts of the brain that actually help manage language and speech.