Modality and Morphology

Abstract

Written language is an evolutionarily recent human invention whose neural substrates cannot, therefore, be determined by the genetic code. How, then, does the brain incorporate skills of this type? One possibility is that written language is parasitic on evolutionarily older skills such as spoken language, while another is that dedicated substrates develop with expertise. If written language is parasitic on spoken language, then acquired deficits of spoken and written language should necessarily co-occur. Alternatively, if there are at least some dedicated written language substrates, these deficits may (doubly) dissociate. We report on five individuals with aphasia, documenting a double dissociation in which the production of affixes (e.g., jumping) is disrupted in writing but not speaking, or vice versa. The findings reveal considerable independence of the written and spoken language systems in terms of morpho-orthographic operations. Understanding these properties of the adult orthographic system has implications for the education and rehabilitation of written language.

Voxel-based lesion analysis of brain regions underlying reading and writing

“…For example, VLSM can identify brain areas on a voxel-by-voxel basis that are critical for a given process, based on a continuous measure of impairment severity across a large sample, while case studies provide the opportunity to do more detailed testing and better characterize the nature of the processes subserved by these regions. The current study also complements smaller group studies that employ rigorously-matched experimental stimuli in order to tease apart the neural correlates of distinct subcomponents of reading or writing (Rapp et al, 2015). Also complementary, functional imaging studies in healthy individuals and acute stroke patients provide a snapshot of the larger network of regions recruited during a particular activity.…”

“…In the modern era, much less attention has been dedicated to identifying the brain networks associated with writing (also referred to as spelling in the literature, depending on the task; Kemmerer, 2014; Lorch, 2013; Rapp and Dufor, 2011; Rapp et al, 2015; Starrfelt and Shallice, 2014). A recent meta-analysis of 11 functional imaging studies reported that the most consistent regions associated with writing were the left inferior temporal cortex, fusiform gyrus, inferior frontal cortex, and the posterior intraparietal sulcus (though not the angular gyrus, which has been frequently implicated in lesion studies; Purcell et al, 2011a).…”

When Negative Turns out to Be Positive

“…It is essential to consider the context and the manner in which cue words are presented. For instance, there are differences in lexico-grammatical patterns between spoken and written registers (Biber et al 2000;Rapp et al 2015), which can impact the responses.…”

The use of intracranial recordings to decode human language: Challenges and opportunities

“…These four modalities share receptive and production areas of the brain, yet, they also have unique processing levels and neuroanatomical substrates (Berninger and Abbott 2010; Singleton and Shulman 2014). For instance, a person with a writing deficit may still speak normally, or vice versa (Rapp, Fischer-Baum, and Miozzo 2015). The locations of brain injuries are known to lead to different types of language deficits.…”