IUBio

Neural level influencing functional descriptions

John Hasenkam johnhkm at logicworld.com.au
Wed Sep 16 22:41:54 EST 1998


F. Frank LeFever wrote:
> 
> The bilingual aphasia studies: examples of alternating aphasias, in
> which deficits were worse in one language, then better in that language
> but worse in the other (rather thn better recovery in one or different
> rates of recovery)--Michel Paradis (Montreal, I believe) helped devise
> a collection of balanced two-language pairs of tests to enable
> comparisons between languages in assessing bilingual aphasics and
> reported such cases.
> 
> I'll also add the personal observation that bilingual friends returning
> from a visit in their native country  (and/or in phone calls during the
> visit) seemed to show a transient deterioration in their English
> ability.

 Inhibition: interesting story by Roger Penrose, mathematical physicist,
similiar to tale by French mathematician Hadamard: When thinking about
mathematics, if asked a question, they can conceive the answer but seem
incapable of finding the words for it. Penrose speculates that it is as
if his language capacities had been turned off while doing his
mathematics. The gap is only a few seconds, but Penrose identifies this
as something quite unusual in his thinking, not like 'being lost for
words', but being momentarily asphasic.


> In other words, I suggest that these nearby but different language
> circuits might be mutually inhibitory, making rapid sucession
> alternation difficult.  (How simultaneous translaters manage it, I
> don't know!)

Terrance Deacon, in, The Symbolic Species, has come up with an
interesting idea regarding simultaneous translaters. Apparently they
prefer a specific listening ear (right or left) and this suggests some
lateralisation of functions, probably so as to avoid neural confusion
(whatever). 

Deacon puts forward an argument that the right hemisphere is involved in
the prosodic and timing elements of language, the left largely devoted
to motor and grammatical production. He believes language functions are
mapped onto pre-existing neural structures and moves away (not entirely)
from the idea of specific language centers in the brain. Interesting
text which the author of this thread may find interesting. 

There is evidence for some degree of language processing in the right,
(Gardner 1973 on metaphors and laughter, semantic paralexis?). Given the
dominating influence of language on our thinking I would be surprised if
all the required processing occurred in only one hemisphere, but a
definite bias exists. I have enough trouble with English.



John Hasenkam
johnhkm at logicworld.com.au



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