PSYCH 2NF3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Paul Broca, Carl Wernicke, Temporal Lobe
13 Jan 2020
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Lecture 2
The Brain/History ā Contād
a lot of information or education on the neuropsychology comes from
professionals; not always sure because whenever you ask a psychologist a
question they will say they think that is true, etc, because it is all very complex
case studies are in-depth investigations ā clinicians or someone with training who
sits down with a patient and observes their behaviour (single person observation
but sometimes can be a group observation)
how did neuropsychologists inform the information regarding the brain?
Paul Broca ā one patient came to his oļ¬ce and had trouble with language, could
speak but had a diļ¬cult time getting the words out
Broca had conversations with the patient and what he discovered was there
was damage in the left hemisphere of the frontal lobe/cortex of the patient
note cerebral cortex is the top most area you can see with the naked eye
moving on, in the frontal lobe, Broca noticed damage there and later on in his
career he noticed deļ¬cits in language in other patients and the same damage
in the same area
this area is now called Brocaās area ā people interpreted that his ļ¬ndings
showed that language resides totally in this part ā one part of the brain is
solely strictly involved with preforming this behaviour, in this case it is speech
production (strict localization)
however then came Carl Wernicke who said that temporal lobe/cortex is also
involved with language ā so now there are two parts of the brain that are both
involved with language/speech production
two elements of language ā you have to string a group of words together in a
way that makes sense and the second part is movement; getting the words
out in a temporal sequence for example we all speak at a particular speed
we also have motor movements that goes along with the production of
words (we use muscles to do this, our mouth)
Wernickeās model was one of the earliest models of this
you have sound which comes through the auditory pathway; neurons
ļ¬ring because there is sound (waves come into the ear, etc)
the auditory information coming in gets stored in the temporal cortex
which is very close to your ears
there is organization and structure of language that occurs in the temporal
cortex as well
there is also a pathway where a bunch of neurones spend energy to take
this information to the frontal cortex ā articulation
