REGIONS OF THE BRAIN SERIES

A postmortem examination showed a lesion in a large area towards the lower middle of his left frontal lobe particularly important in language formulation. In 1861, French neurologist Pierre Paul Broca described a patient unable to speak who had no motor impairments to account for the inability. paul pod/Flickr, CC BY Selective problems To speak sensibly, you must think of words to convey an idea or message, formulate them into a sentence according to grammatical rules and then use your lungs, vocal cords and mouth to create sounds. This makes sense, because the left side of the body is controlled by the motor cortex on the right side of the brain. The chance of the person being left-handed is also increased.

But we do know that injury or conditions such as epilepsy, if it affects the left side of the brain early in a childвЂ™s development, can increase the chances language will develop on the right side. Why the left side is favoured for language isnвЂ™t known. There is an evolutionary view that specialisation of certain functions to one side or the other may be an advantage, as many animals, especially vertebrates, exhibit brain function with prominence on one side. But some people use an even mix of both sides and, rarely, some have right dominance for language. Most of this language-related brain activity is likely occurring in the left side of your brain. Regions in your frontal, temporal and parietal lobes formulate what you want to say and the motor cortex, in your frontal lobe, enables you to speak the words.

Complementary to this is expressive language, which is the ability to produce language. This enables our receptive language abilities, which means the ability to understand language. These regions work together as a network to process words and word sequences to determine context and meaning. These include the angular gyrus in the parietal lobe, WernickeвЂ™s area (comprising mainly the top rear portion of the temporal lobe), insular cortex, basal ganglia and cerebellum. If you listen to someone else reading, then you use the auditory cortex not far from your ears.ДЄ system of regions towards the back and middle of your brain help you interpret the text. If you are reading in Braille, you use the sensory cortex towards the top of the brain. This complex process involves many brain regions.Дetecting text usually involves the optic nerve and other nerve bundles delivering signals from the eyes to the visual cortex at the back of the brain. When you read something, you first need to detect the words and then to interpret them by determining context and meaning.

REGIONS OF THE BRAIN SERIES

For now, though, our Brain Control series explores what we do know about the brainвЂ™s command of six central functions: language, mood, memory, vision, personality and motor skills вЂ“ and what happens when things go wrong. The brain is key to our existence, but thereвЂ™s a long way to go before neuroscience can truly capture its staggering capacity.

Regions of the brain