Language and Cognition

Colombo, June 2011

Day 5
Aphasia
Dissociations
Defining aphasia

Rao 1994
 Defining language
• Speech?
• Communication?
• Thought?
• A separate system of knowledge?

• Double dissociations
 Double dissociations
• Cognitive systems dissociate from one another
• One can be impaired while another is (relatively) spared
• This is taken as evidence that cognitive systems are distinct
– the brain / mind is MODULAR in its organization
• There are dissociations within language too
Localization of function
• Phrenology – Gall, Spurzheim, early
1800s
• Different cognitive functions can be
localized to different parts of the brain
• Level of development of a particular
function is reflected in skull formation

• The sad tale of Phineas Gage

• Dissociation of language from other
cognitive faculties
 Localization of language
• Paul Broca (1861): patient • Carl Wernicke: patients with
‘Tan’ posterior lesions in the left
• Slow, effortful, nonfluent hemisphere
speech with many omissions; • comprehension is impaired
but good comprehension but speech is fluent
• on parle avec l’hemisphere
gauche
Wernicke’s prediction
• Predicted two language
centers:
– Broca’s area: speech
articulation
– Wernicke’s area: speech
comprehension
• Predicted a third
‘disconnection’
syndrome – damage to
the arcuate fasciculus
• “Conduction aphasia”
Chris Rorden, University of Nottingham
http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/cr1/c83lnp/c83lnp2.pdf
 Wernicke-Lichtheim model
Concepts (distributed)

Broca’s aphasia Wernicke’s aphasia

Broca’s area arcuate Wernicke’s area

fasciculus

conduction
aphasia

Conduction aphasia: can produce and understand meaningful speech, but cannot
repeat words they hear
Wernicke-Lichtheim model

1. Broca’s aphasia
2. Wernicke’s aphasia
3. Conduction aphasia
4. Transcortical motor
aphasia
5. Dyspraxia
6. Transcortical sensory
aphasia
7. Pure word deafness
 Boston classification
• Nonfluent aphasias
– Broca’s aphasia
– Transcortical motor aphasia
– Global aphasia
• Fluent aphasias
– Wernicke’s aphasia
– Conduction aphasia
– Anomic aphasia
• Alexia / Agraphia
• Some rare syndromes: pure word deafness, optic
aphasia
• Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Exam (Goodglass, Kaplan &
Barresi, 2001)
 Classifying the aphasias

• Advantages of classifying patients into syndromes

– increases interscientist communication
– groups homogeneous patients for research and for therapy
– describes a set of behaviors for diagnostic purposes
– can help in determining a prognosis
– contribute data toward localization of lesion - advancing our
understanding of the relations between brain and mind
• Disadvantages of syndrome approaches
– limits thought
– exceptions may be more interesting and more fruitful for research
– may force a label onto a patient who does not really fall into a
particular syndrome category
– presumes too much about premorbid functioning
– localization issues may be vexed by individual differences
 Cookie theft descriptions
• Cookie jar …fall over…chair…water…empty

• Well this is … mother is away here working her

work out o' here to get her better, but when she's
looking, the two boys looking in the other part.
One their small tile into here time here. She's
working another time because she's getting to.
So two boys work together and one is sneakin'
around here, making his work an' his further
funnas his time he had.
Dissociations within aphasia