Areas Of The Brain Specialized In Language: Their Location And Functions
Brain processes have a very important role in regulating our daily activities. Specifically, there are several areas of the brain that are responsible for organizing linguistic abilities and activities that are necessary to communicate.
Three of the most studied areas in relation to language are Broca’s Area, Wernicke’s Area and the angular gyrus. Below we explain what each one consists of and how the brain and language are related.
One of the topics that has most attracted specialists and non-specialists in neuroscience and cognitive science has been how the human brain regulates linguistic and communicative activity
Obviously, as happens in all the activities we carry out, for language and communication to happen the participation of the brain is necessary But this participation does not happen without a specific order, it follows a series of patterns depending on the action.
That is to say, at the brain level, language is a process that follows a series of patterns whose regulation has been located in different areas. The neurologist Antonio Damasio (cited by Castaño, 2003) tells us that there are three main systems in charge of this. One of the systems is instrumental (in charge of execution), another is semantic (in charge of coding) and the other is an intermediate system that serves to mediate the previous two.
Areas of the brain specialized in language
Each of the brain systems that are responsible for regulating language act through the activity of different brain areas. Three of the most important areas are Broca’s Area, Wernicke’s Area and the Angular Gyrus
Broca’s area is part of the instrumental language system. The drill bit area is related to the capacity of arrange phonemes to create words and then sentences For this reason, it is also linked to the use of verbs and other words necessary to interact. When this area is damaged, syntactic difficulty (related to the order, combination and relationship between words) also occurs.
It is called Broca’s area after the person who began his study (Paul Broca) in 1861. What he did was analyze the brain of a person who had had very significant difficulties expressing himself verbally, while his understanding of language was apparently functional. He found a tumor in a part of the left cerebral hemisphere, and named the clinical picture “aphemia.” From then on, this area of the left cerebral hemisphere is known as Broca’s area and It is related to disorders in the expressive faculty of verbal language For example, “Broca’s aphasia”.
2. Wernicke area
Wernicke’s area is also part of the instrumental language system. It helps to evoke and vocalize concepts, and is also responsible for processing sounds to combine them creating units capable of having meaning
It is not directly responsible for regulating semantic activity (giving meaning to linguistic expressions), but for decoding phonemes. However, when there is damage to this brain area, causing difficulties in discriminating and processing sounds, the semantic field is affected.
The regions that make up this area are related to two other brain areas, responsible for regulating motor and premotor activity. Wernicke’s area and the motor activity zones are connected through a direct corticocortical pathway and a corticosubcortical pathway. The first way is the one that regulates associative learning in a more conscious and voluntary dimension; and the second is linked to automatic behaviors such as habits.
This area is located in the left hemisphere of the brain, around the Sylvian fissure and next to the insula cortex. It has been studied since the mid-19th century (so there are several proposals about where it is located) and was named in honor of the neurologist Carl Wernicke.
3. Angular gyrus
The brain is covered by numerous folds or reliefs that have very important and not yet fully known functions. These folds or reliefs are called convolutions
One of the gyri that participates in the regulation of language is the angular gyrus, also known as the angular gyrus or Broadmann area 39 (AB39). In addition to language, this area participates in the activity of episodic and semantic memory, mathematical skills, reading and writing, and spatial attention.
Lesions in this area have been related to semantic aphasia. Because of its relationship with the comprehensive activity of language and communication, many scientists consider this gyrus to be an extension or part of Wernicke’s area.
