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How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map

Author : Michael A. Arbib

Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company

Page : 403 pages

File Size : 12,72 MB

Release : 2020-08-15

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 9027260672

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Book Description

How did humans evolve biologically so that our brains and social interactions could support language processes, and how did cultural evolution lead to the invention of languages (signed as well as spoken)? This book addresses these questions through comparative (neuro)primatology – comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in monkeys, apes and humans – and an EvoDevoSocio framework for approaching biological and cultural evolution within a shared perspective. Each chapter provides an authoritative yet accessible review from a different discipline: linguistics (evolutionary, computational and neuro), archeology and neuroarcheology, macaque neurophysiology, comparative neuroanatomy, primate behavior, and developmental studies. These diverse perspectives are unified by having each chapter close with a section on its implications for creating a new road map for multidisciplinary research. These implications include assessment of the pluses and minuses of the Mirror System Hypothesis as an “old” road map. The cumulative road map is then presented in the concluding chapter. Originally published as a special issue of Interaction Studies 19:1/2 (2018).



How the Brain Got Language

Author : Michael A. Arbib

Publisher : OUP USA

Page : 436 pages

File Size : 29,91 MB

Release : 2012-04-11

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0199896682

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Book Description

Unlike any other species, humans can learn and use language. This book explains how the brain evolved to make language possible, through what Michael Arbib calls the Mirror System Hypothesis. Because of mirror neurons, monkeys, chimps, and humans can learn by imitation, but only "complex imitation," which humans exhibit, is powerful enough to support the breakthrough to language. This theory provides a path from the openness of manual gesture, which we share with nonhuman primates, through the complex imitation of manual skills, pantomime, protosign (communication based on conventionalized manual gestures), and finally to protospeech. The theory explains why we humans are as capable of learning sign languages as we are of learning to speak. This fascinating book shows how cultural evolution took over from biological evolution for the transition from protolanguage to fully fledged languages. The author explains how the brain mechanisms that made the original emergence of languages possible, perhaps 100,000 years ago, are still operative today in the way children acquire language, in the way that new sign languages have emerged in recent decades, and in the historical processes of language change on a time scale from decades to centuries. Though the subject is complex, this book is highly readable, providing all the necessary background in primatology, neuroscience, and linguistics to make the book accessible to a general audience.



Neurobiology of Language

Author : Gregory Hickok

Publisher : Academic Press

Page : 1188 pages

File Size : 30,92 MB

Release : 2015-08-15

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 0124078621

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Book Description

Neurobiology of Language explores the study of language, a field that has seen tremendous progress in the last two decades. Key to this progress is the accelerating trend toward integration of neurobiological approaches with the more established understanding of language within cognitive psychology, computer science, and linguistics. This volume serves as the definitive reference on the neurobiology of language, bringing these various advances together into a single volume of 100 concise entries. The organization includes sections on the field's major subfields, with each section covering both empirical data and theoretical perspectives. "Foundational" neurobiological coverage is also provided, including neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, genetics, linguistic, and psycholinguistic data, and models. - Foundational reference for the current state of the field of the neurobiology of language - Enables brain and language researchers and students to remain up-to-date in this fast-moving field that crosses many disciplinary and subdisciplinary boundaries - Provides an accessible entry point for other scientists interested in the area, but not actively working in it – e.g., speech therapists, neurologists, and cognitive psychologists - Chapters authored by world leaders in the field – the broadest, most expert coverage available



Language in Our Brain

Author : Angela D. Friederici

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 300 pages

File Size : 38,74 MB

Release : 2017-11-16

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0262036924

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Book Description

A comprehensive account of the neurobiological basis of language, arguing that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language. Language makes us human. It is an intrinsic part of us, although we seldom think about it. Language is also an extremely complex entity with subcomponents responsible for its phonological, syntactic, and semantic aspects. In this landmark work, Angela Friederici offers a comprehensive account of these subcomponents and how they are integrated. Tracing the neurobiological basis of language across brain regions in humans and other primate species, she argues that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language. Friederici shows which brain regions support the different language processes and, more important, how these brain regions are connected structurally and functionally to make language processes that take place in milliseconds possible. She finds that one particular brain structure (a white matter dorsal tract), connecting syntax-relevant brain regions, is present only in the mature human brain and only weakly present in other primate brains. Is this the “missing link” that explains humans' capacity for language? Friederici describes the basic language functions and their brain basis; the language networks connecting different language-related brain regions; the brain basis of language acquisition during early childhood and when learning a second language, proposing a neurocognitive model of the ontogeny of language; and the evolution of language and underlying neural constraints. She finds that it is the information exchange between the relevant brain regions, supported by the white matter tract, that is the crucial factor in both language development and evolution.



Language, Music, and the Brain

Author : Michael A. Arbib

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 677 pages

File Size : 45,6 MB

Release : 2013-06-28

Category : Science

ISBN : 0262018101

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Book Description

A presentation of music and language within an integrative, embodied perspective of brain mechanisms for action, emotion, and social coordination. This book explores the relationships between language, music, and the brain by pursuing four key themes and the crosstalk among them: song and dance as a bridge between music and language; multiple levels of structure from brain to behavior to culture; the semantics of internal and external worlds and the role of emotion; and the evolution and development of language. The book offers specially commissioned expositions of current research accessible both to experts across disciplines and to non-experts. These chapters provide the background for reports by groups of specialists that chart current controversies and future directions of research on each theme. The book looks beyond mere auditory experience, probing the embodiment that links speech to gesture and music to dance. The study of the brains of monkeys and songbirds illuminates hypotheses on the evolution of brain mechanisms that support music and language, while the study of infants calibrates the developmental timetable of their capacities. The result is a unique book that will interest any reader seeking to learn more about language or music and will appeal especially to readers intrigued by the relationships of language and music with each other and with the brain. Contributors Francisco Aboitiz, Michael A. Arbib, Annabel J. Cohen, Ian Cross, Peter Ford Dominey, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Leonardo Fogassi, Jonathan Fritz, Thomas Fritz, Peter Hagoort, John Halle, Henkjan Honing, Atsushi Iriki, Petr Janata, Erich Jarvis, Stefan Koelsch, Gina Kuperberg, D. Robert Ladd, Fred Lerdahl, Stephen C. Levinson, Jerome Lewis, Katja Liebal, Jônatas Manzolli, Bjorn Merker, Lawrence M. Parsons, Aniruddh D. Patel, Isabelle Peretz, David Poeppel, Josef P. Rauschecker, Nikki Rickard, Klaus Scherer, Gottfried Schlaug, Uwe Seifert, Mark Steedman, Dietrich Stout, Francesca Stregapede, Sharon Thompson-Schill, Laurel Trainor, Sandra E. Trehub, Paul Verschure



Number and Language Processing

Author : Xavier Seron

Publisher : Psychology Press

Page : 92 pages

File Size : 18,82 MB

Release : 2001

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 9781841699172

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Book Description

The relationship between language and number processing is discussed is discussed through the examination of the similarities and divergences of language and number disorders in apahsic subjects, in patients with dementia, and in children.



Advances in the Neurocognition of Music and Language

Author : Daniela Sammler

Publisher :

Page : 338 pages

File Size : 45,73 MB

Release : 2020-09-16

Category :

ISBN : 9783039431267

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Book Description

Neurocomparative music and language research has seen major advances over the past two decades. The goal of this Special Issue on "Advances in the Neurocognition of Music and Language" was to showcase the multiple neural analogies between musical and linguistic information processing, their entwined organization in human perception and cognition, and to infer the applicability of the combined knowledge in pedagogy and therapy. Here, we summarize the main insights provided by the contributions and integrate them into current frameworks of rhythm processing, neuronal entrainment, predictive coding, and cognitive control.



Language and the Brain

Author : Loraine K. Obler

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Page : 228 pages

File Size : 35,3 MB

Release : 1999

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 9780521466417

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Book Description

An introduction to neurolinguistics showing how language is organized in the brain.



Pathways of the Brain

Author : Sydney M. Lamb

Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing

Page : 429 pages

File Size : 43,58 MB

Release : 1999

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 9027236755

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Book Description

The brain is the organ of knowledge and organizer of our abilities, our means of recognizing a face in a crowd, of conversing about anything we experience or imagine, of forming thoughts and developing ideas, of instantly understanding words coming rapidly in conversation. How does it manage all this? Does it represent information in symbols or in the connectivity of a vast network?Pathways of the Brain builds a theory to answer such questions. Using a top-down modeling strategy, it charts relationships among words and other products of the brain's linguistic system to reveal properties of that system. Going beyond earlier linguistics, it sets three plausibility requirements for a valid neurocognitive theory: operational, developmental, and neurological: It must show how the linguistic system can operate for speaking and understanding, how it can be learned by children, and how it is implemented in neural structures. Unlike theories that leave linguistics isolated from science, it builds a bridge to biology. Of interest to anthropologists, linguists, neurologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists, and any thoughtful person interested in language or the brain. The author is Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Cognitive Sciences.



The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness

Author : Stanislas Dehaene

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 264 pages

File Size : 36,30 MB

Release : 2001

Category : Philosophy

ISBN : 9780262541312

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Book Description

Empirical and theoretical foundations of a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness.