The signing brain: the neurobiology of sign language

MacSweeney, Mairéad; Capek, Cheryl M.; Campbell, Ruth; Woll, Bencie

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.07.010

Cited by 226 publications

(193 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Conjunctions included the frontal opercular regions historically referred to as ''Broca's area.'' The IFG plays an unambiguous role in language processing and damage to the area typically results in spoken and sign language aphasia (6,13,14). Neuroimaging studies in healthy subjects show that the IFG is reliably activated during the processing of spoken, written, and signed language at the levels we have focused upon here, i.e., comprehension of words or of simple syntactic structures (6,13,14).…”

Section: Shared Activations For Perception Of Symbolic Gesture and Spmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…For many reasons, sign languages are not ideal for this purpose. Over the past decade, neuroimaging studies have clearly and reproducibly demonstrated that American Sign Language, British Sign Language, Langue des Signes Québécoise, indeed all sign languages studied thus far, elicit patterns of activity in core perisylvian areas that are, for the most part, indistinguishable from those accompanying the production and comprehension of spoken language (6). But this is unsurprising.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…These are all natural languages, which by definition communicate propositions by means of a formal linguistic structure, conforming to a set of phonological, lexical, and syntactic rules comparable to those that govern spoken or written language. The unanimous interpretation, reinforced by the sign aphasia literature (6), has been that the perisylvian cortices process languages that possess this canonical, rule-based structure, independent of the modality in which they are expressed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Symbolic gestures and spoken language are processed by a common neural system

Gannon

Emmorey

et al. 2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

228

193

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Symbolic gestures, such as pantomimes that signify actions (e.g., threading a needle) or emblems that facilitate social transactions (e.g., finger to lips indicating ''be quiet''), play an important role in human communication. They are autonomous, can fully take the place of words, and function as complete utterances in their own right. The relationship between these gestures and spoken language remains unclear. We used functional MRI to investigate whether these two forms of communication are processed by the same system in the human brain. Responses to symbolic gestures, to their spoken glosses (expressing the gestures' meaning in English), and to visually and acoustically matched control stimuli were compared in a randomized block design. General Linear Models (GLM) contrasts identified shared and unique activations and functional connectivity analyses delineated regional interactions associated with each condition. Results support a model in which bilateral modality-specific areas in superior and inferior temporal cortices extract salient features from vocalauditory and gestural-visual stimuli respectively. However, both classes of stimuli activate a common, left-lateralized network of inferior frontal and posterior temporal regions in which symbolic gestures and spoken words may be mapped onto common, corresponding conceptual representations. We suggest that these anterior and posterior perisylvian areas, identified since the mid-19th century as the core of the brain's language system, are not in fact committed to language processing, but may function as a modality-independent semiotic system that plays a broader role in human communication, linking meaning with symbols whether these are

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Section: Shared Activations For Perception Of Symbolic Gesture and Spmentioning

confidence: 81%

mentioning

confidence: 98%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Symbolic gestures and spoken language are processed by a common neural system

Gannon

Emmorey

et al. 2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

228

193

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“…During language processing, speakers of English, Mandarin, and sign languages activate a leftlateralized network of brain regions in the prefrontal, lateral temporal, and temporoparietal cortices (5,6). Damage to these brain regions in adulthood leads to profound language deficits (7,8).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults

Bedny

Pascual‐Leone

Dodell-Feder

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

361

392

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Humans are thought to have evolved brain regions in the left frontal and temporal cortex that are uniquely capable of language processing. However, congenitally blind individuals also activate the visual cortex in some verbal tasks. We provide evidence that this visual cortex activity in fact reflects language processing. We find that in congenitally blind individuals, the left visual cortex behaves similarly to classic language regions: (i) BOLD signal is higher during sentence comprehension than during linguistically degraded control conditions that are more difficult; (ii) BOLD signal is modulated by phonological information, lexical semantic information, and sentence-level combinatorial structure; and (iii) functional connectivity with language regions in the left prefrontal cortex and thalamus are increased relative to sighted individuals. We conclude that brain regions that are thought to have evolved for vision can take on language processing as a result of early experience. Innate microcircuit properties are not necessary for a brain region to become involved in language processing.plasticity | language evolution

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“…Like spoken languages, they are organized at phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic levels 5 . Not only do auditory deprivation and language experience mediate plastic changes in deaf individuals, but the robust left-hemisphere involvement in language potentially allows a clear anatomical segregation between them: as the left STC is involved in the processing of language independently of modality (see refs [6][7][8], plastic changes in this region are likely to be mediated by mechanisms supporting the development and acquisition of sign language, and not by general visual processing effects; this constraint may not be true of the right STC. Studying neural reorganization in deaf brains allows us to disentangle plastic changes, and their interaction, both when they are due to life-long sensori-motor adaptation to auditory deprivation, and when they are due to life-long sign language experience.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissociating cognitive and sensory neural plasticity in human superior temporal cortex

et al. 2013

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Disentangling the effects of sensory and cognitive factors on neural reorganization is fundamental for establishing the relationship between plasticity and functional specialization. Auditory deprivation in humans provides a unique insight into this problem, because the origin of the anatomical and functional changes observed in deaf individuals is not only sensory, but also cognitive, owing to the implementation of visual communication strategies such as sign language and speechreading. Here, we describe a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of individuals with different auditory deprivation and sign language experience. We find that sensory and cognitive experience cause plasticity in anatomically and functionally distinguishable substrates. This suggests that after plastic reorganization, cortical regions adapt to process a different type of input signal, but preserve the nature of the computation they perform, both at a sensory and cognitive level.

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The signing brain: the neurobiology of sign language

Cited by 226 publications

References 60 publications

Symbolic gestures and spoken language are processed by a common neural system

Symbolic gestures and spoken language are processed by a common neural system

Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults

Dissociating cognitive and sensory neural plasticity in human superior temporal cortex

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