Module 4: Brain of a

bilingual
Main points

 When it comes understanding the brain basis of language, studies in

bilingualism offers interesting insights into the following areas:

 Laterality
 Allocation of cognitive resources
 Language disorder
Why study bilingual brain?

 Though the research in the beginning of this domain was based on

the false presumption that the typical language user is monolingual,
the driving question till date has changed.

 The bilingual brain has generated much interest and much

controversy, with the dominant question being whether
 there may be distinct neural correlates of multiple languages.
 separate brain regions recruited in the learning of second language than
are used for the first language.
Cerebral Laterality
 The brain can be divided into two main hemispheres: the left and the
right hemisphere.
 The two hemispheres are not mirror images of each other.
 The left and right hemisphere exchange information through a set of
axons known as the corpus callosum. Damage to the corpus callosum
interferes with exchange of information between the two
hemispheres
 In most humans the left hemisphere specializes in language
 Lateralization is the division of labour between the two hemispheres.
Or, functional specialization of the two hemispheres.

 Neural functions or cognitive processes tend to be specialized to either

one side of the brain or the other. This function of the brain is known as
Cerebral Laterality.

 Each hemisphere controls contralateral (opposite) sides of the body. So

the functions on the right side of the body are controlled by the left
hemisphere of the brain and vice versa.

 The basic functions that the left hemisphere is responsible for include
language and calculations, while the right hemisphere is more closely
associated with visual-spatial recognition and facial recognition.
Source: [Link]
dominance
Behavioral Laterality
 Lateralization of brain and behaviour refers to the fact that the
hemispheres of the brain differentially control behaviour.

 Mark Dax (1865) had first observed that a person with injury to the
left hemisphere (but not to the right), could not speak

 Later Paul Broca extended this line of work.

 The most extensive body of research on language and the brain in

healthy bilinguals involves behavioral laterality measures.

 This depends on the contralateral sensory organization of the human

brain by presenting stimulus on one side of the visual field or auditory
field and inferring from the pattern of response the relative
involvement of the hemispheres in the processing of the input.
 Studies on monolinguals have already shown right ear and visual
advantage.

 In monolinguals, a right ear advantage or right visual field advantage

is typically observed for verbal stimuli. This means verbal judgments
are made faster when the stimuli is directed to the left hemisphere.

 In case of bilingualism, this mainly refers to the hemispheric

dominance for L1 or L2.

 In other words, the question was if the pattern is same in case of

bilinguals or if there is an involvement of the right hemisphere.
 Some major measures of behavioral laterality include the
following:
1. Dichotic listening test
2. Right visual field advantage
3. Dual task paradigm
 Dichotic listening test
 The standard dichotic listening test involves simultaneous presentation
of three pairs of spoken digits through earphones, one in each ear and
then the participants is asked to report all digits. This is preferred to be
administered to healthy individuals.

 Kimura [1961] found out the right ear advantage in people and reported
that participants tell more of the digits presented to the right ear.

 Hugdahl [2011] reviews 50 years of research generating out of dichotic

listening tasks strongly underscores its importance in informing about
laterality of the brain.

 REA as proposed by Kimura in 1961 has been used in bilingualism

studies, however the results are conflicting.
 Some studies have shown REA effect in bilinguals, suggesting that
the dominant hemisphere [left] is equally involved in processing both
languages. [Gordon and Zatorre 1981]

 Some other studies have shown that high proficient bilinguals show
involvement of both hemispheres. [Magiste 1992].

 Also, in a variant of dichotic listening task on Portuguese-French

monolingual and bilinguals did not show REA. Hence, Oliviera et al,
[1997] proposed that appropriate levels of task difficulty and
attentional demands need to be set in order to understand the neural
correlates of language function.

 These days dichotic listening is often paired with imaging techniques.

Right visual field advantage
 In a typical visual field task, the design involve presenting stimulus on
the right or left side of the fixation cross on the computer screen and
participants are judged on:

 The accuracy of reporting words after very brief presentations,

 The accuracy of indicating which of two letters occurred in a given position
in stimulus words
 The speed with which words can be read aloud
 Distinguishing from non-words
 Judging for their meaning
Right Visual Field Advantage:

 The existence of the right visual field (RVF) advantage for visual word recognition has been
known for over 50 years (Bradshaw & Nettleton, 1983; Hellige, 1993; Young, Bion, & Ellis,
1980).
 The reason for such advantage has been assigned to the dominance of left hemisphere in
language function.
 However, there were also theories proposing the perceptual/attention bias to be the reason.
 This bias points to the fact that in English, people are used to read from left to right thus
favoring attentional bias a towards right of the fixation. Strong evidence favoring language
dominance over perceptual or attentional biases has recently been reported by Hunter and
Brysbaert [2008].
 In this study they used only left handed participants and results confirm visual field
advantage in terms of hemispheric dominance and not attentional bias.

Banich, 2003; Bourne, 2006; Ellis, 2004; Ellis, Ansorge, & Lavidor, 2007a, 2007b; Ellis, Young, & Anderson, 1988; Jordan,
Patching, & Milner, 2000; Lindell, Nicholls, & Castles, 2002
Dual task paradigm
 Dual task paradigm had originally been created to study divided
attention.

 However, this task has been helpful in understanding the cerebral

laterality or the cognitive asymmetry in case of bilinguals.

 Dual task paradigm uses two tasks given to the participants.

 The coordination of the tasks requires additional resources, the

amount of capacity/ resources allocated to performance of each task
decreases.

 As a result, there is a decline in the performance of the tasks. The

decline in the performance of the dual tasks compared to the single
task levels is known as the dual task decrement.
 In right-handed individuals, the dual task decrement is typically more
extreme for right-hand performance combined with simultaneous
speech than for the left.

 This performance pattern is known as the lateralized dual task

decrement and is interpreted as reflecting left-hemisphere
lateralization of speech production.

 For bilinguals, the cognitive load affects L2 more than L1.

(Leftheri, Katerina & Lapointe, Leonard & Goldinger, Stephen, 1997).

Meta analysis
 Laterality studies were dominant in 1970s and 1980s. Vaid and Hall
[1991] carried out a meta-analysis of 59 laterality studies. Out of
these, 11 studies had involved both monolinguals and bilinguals.

 They found no difference among monolingual Vs bilingual

lateralization.

 However, the variable of age of acquisition of L2 was found to be

significant.

 Early bilinguals show evidence of bilateral organization in language

processing whereas late bilinguals show left hemispheric
lateralization.
 A subsequent meta-analysis [2005] on 28 studies that compared
monolinguals with bilinguals, found
 Bilinguals were less left lateralized than monolinguals
 This was particularly true of early bilinguals

 Yet another meta-analysis [2007] based on 69 studies [including

dichotic listening, visual field studies, dual task paradigm [also called
verbal-manual interference tasks] that compared bilinguals based on
their two languages or with other bilinguals.

 Corroborated the finding that age of onset is a significant variable and the
difference between the early and late bilinguals also hold true.
 The meta-analytic studies point to some important differences with
respect to age as a factor. However, there is a need

 to have more studies of non-English speaking bilinguals

 more early bilinguals need to be represented in the data

 as most of the studies have used single words, more studies are required that
use sentence level or beyond as stimuli

 More importantly, these studies only refer to inter-hemispheric differences,

and not the neural activation within each hemisphere. For that information,
we need to look at neurobehavioral measures.
Aphasia & electrophysiological data
Aphasia
 Language disorders can be of two types: they can either be acquired
or developmental
 Developmental language disorders occur during the acquisition of
first language.
 On the other hand, acquired disorders usually occur after the
complete acquisition of the first language, often caused as a result of
brain damage induced by surgery, accident or even illness.
 One such acquired language disorder is Aphasia
 Aphasia is a disorder that results from damage to portions of the
brain that are responsible for language. For most people, these areas
are on the left side of the brain
Aphasia studies

 Initial discoveries about neural substrates of language came from

aphasia research.
 Aphasia research goes back to more hundred and fifty years, to the
time of Paul Broca (major publications during 1861-1865).
 Even today, research in this line continue to provide new insights into
the question of the neural signature of language.
Aphasia Historical background
 The first writings on the links between language loss and brain
damage dates back to Hippocrates in the 5th century BC.

 But scientific investigation of aphasia began around mid 19th century.

 In 1836, Marc Dax described an association between aphasia and

disease of the left hemisphere; “Lesions of the left hemisphere
coinciding with forgetfulness of signs of thought”.

 However, he never published or presented the paper.

 His son, Gustav brought this paper to light after Broca published a
series of works on the same lines.
 Mainly because Broca was the first to report evidence in print, he is
credited with the discovery that “ we speak with our left hemisphere”.

 Soon, other scientists followed in his footsteps and in the late 1800s
Carl Warnicke systematically explored the other forms that aphasia
can take.

 Warnicke published a groundbreaking monograph when he was only

26 years old, documenting a new type of aphasia and correctly
predicting the existence of many others.
 Aphasia can be broadly classified into numerous types
 The most commonly discussed are 3 types of aphasia:
1. Global Aphasia
2. Broca’s Aphasia
3. Wernicke’s Aphasia
Broca’s Aphasia
 This disorder is caused when there is impairment in the Broca’s area
found on the left hemisphere of the brain.
 Named after Paul Broca who discovered this area in 1861, the Broca’s
area is claimed by him to be the area responsible for syntax of a
language.
 Also known as non-fluent aphasia.
 This aphasia is characterized by loss of ability to produce language,
which includes spoken, written or manual language.
 The speech produced might include import content words but may
leave out functional words like articles and prepositions.
 Hence, the meaning of the sentence might be understood but it may
not be grammatically correct.
Source: [Link]
aphasia
 Broca’s area: located at the base of the motor cortex, responsible for
organizing the articulatory patters of language and directing the motor cortex
when we want to talk. also controls use of inflections (tense, number),
function morphemes (determiners, prepositions). Recent research has also
found evidence of involvement of this area in comprehension tasks involving
TMS.

 Patient’s speech is sparse, effortful, slow, syntactically simplified

A patient’s answer when asked to describe the cookie theft picture in Boston
Diagnostic Aphasia Examination:

Kid…ki…can…candy…cookie…candy…easy does it…slam…fall…men…girl…

dishes…soap…soap…water…water… falling pah that’s all…. Dish…cookies…
he…down…slipping water…it hurts…clean up…dishes…up…
The cookie theft

Source: ("The cookie theft") from the Boston

Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (Goodglass et al.,
2000).
Prototypical clinical features of Broca’s aphasia

 Production

 Non fluent

 verbal output of Broca’s aphasics is almost invariable nonfluent---that is produced in a slow,

laboured, hesitant manner with abnormal rhythm and melody.

 Average number of words generated per minute is greatly reduced and so is the general length of
utterances

 Also sometimes, the patient could have apraxia of speech, which is resulted from disturbances to the
high level of articulatory coordination.

 Agrammatism: disrupted production of closed class morphemes and on the other hand, much less
impaired production of open class morphemes together with reduced syntactic complexity is called
agrammatism.
 Comprehension: it is less affected, though patients exhibit difficulties
in naming different objects in a sequence; complex sentences, with
relative clauses etc.

 Repetition: better than spontaneous speech, but still shows problems.

Problems may occue at phonological, lexical or grammatical levels.
E.g. the beautiful purple butterfly will be repeated as either beautiful
butterfly or purple butterfly.

 Lesion: Broca’s area. Sometimes, more serious cases exhibit damage

to additional areas as well, like BA22, BA46.
Wernicke’s Aphasia
 This disorder is caused by impairment to the Wernicke’s area
 Named after Karl Wernicke, this area was found in 1874, was considered to be
the area responsible for semantic understanding of the language.
 The pace and intonation of speech is not effected.
 Patients tend to use elaborate descriptions instead of simple words and
statements. Some even go as far as creating new words altogether while
referring to something.
 Thus, the comprehension ability of those suffering from Wernicke’s Aphasia is
drastically affected.
Source:
[Link]
aphasia
 Wernicke’s area: located near the back section of the auditory cortex.
This part is involved in comprehension of words and selection of words
when producing sentences

 Wernicke’s area example

 Is this some of the work we did before?...all right…from when wine I’m
here…what’s wrong with me because I …was myself until the taenz took
something about the time between me and my regular time in that time
and thy took the time here and that’s when the time took around here
and saw me and around and it is its started with me no time and then I
bekan work of nothing else that’s the way the doctor find me that way….
Clinical features of Wernicke’s aphasia

 Production: unaffected. Patients are often hyperfluent, speaking at a

higher rate than normal.

 Comprehension: impaired. In some severe cases, patients

understand almost nothing that is spoken to them.

 Repetition: abnormal.

 Lesion correlate: posterior third of left superior temporal gyrus, left

middle temporal gyrus. Some patients have exhibited lesion
extending upto left inferior parietal lobule.
Global aphasia

 This is the most devastating one and thus also the most easy to
describe.

 Almost all linguistic communication is compromised.

 Spoken language production is extremely limited, often restricted to

some stereotypic utterances, like yes, no, da….etc).

 Comprehension is severely damaged.

 Lesion correlate: entire left perisylvian cortex and the underlying

white matter.
Global Aphasia
 This type of aphasia is considered to be the most severe
 It is a result of lesions or injuries in the left hemisphere of the brain
 In this disorder, the ability to communicate with language is wholly
impaired.
 Patients with global aphasia can only produce a few recognizable
words and can understand very little or no spoken language.
 While their linguistic facilities may be severely impaired, these
patients have fully preserved cognitive and intellectual abilities
unrelated to language or speech.
 While this type of aphasia can improve as the brain heals, there may
be lasting damage.
Comparison
Source: [Link]
Aphasia in bilinguals
 Aphasia research does not consider only monolinguals, but also
includes bilinguals.

 For over a hundred years, researchers have wondered how a

bilinguals’ two languages might be affected by aphasia.

 Often such people exhibit a comparable degree of impairment and

recovery in all of their languages.

 But, sometimes, there are different patterns.

These different patterns were listed by Paradis (1989, 1998)

 1. Selective aphasia: where patient’s only one language is impaired.

 2. Differential aphasia: where the languages show different patterns of impairment.

 3. Successive aphasia: where one language shows signs of impairment following

another.

 4. Antagonistic: recovery of one progresses while recovery of the other regresses.

 5. Alternating antagonism: Availability shifts between languages.

 6. Blending or mixing: properties of multiple language are mixed: one language spoken
with the accent of the other, inflexions of one language applied to the other etc.
 Findings from differential impairment hinted at language acquisition history as a
possible mediator for neural organization of language.

 A 1959 study [Lambert and Fillenbaum] noted that

 aphasics who had acquired their two languages in similar contexts tended to show parallel
deficits
 those who learnt the languages at different stages tended to show differential impairment.
 Many such findings have been cast in doubt mainly citing reasons of publication bias,
‘selected cases’ etc. for example, an unselected group study [Fabbro, 2001] found
that parallel language impairment represented 65% of the cases.

 However, when non-parallel deficits do happen, they have been ascribed to four
different principles:
 Rule of Ribot: Patient’s first learnt language would be spared and/or first to be
recovered in polyglot aphasia. Theodule Robot’s theory about retrograde amnesia
suggested [1881] that the earlier memories or skills learnt earlier in life are more
likely to remain intact or lost later than the later learnt skill or memories.

 Pitres’ rule: it is not when the language was learnt but rather how well it was
used. So the language that was used most prior to aphasia would be most
resistant to impairment.

 Minkowski : Third principle proposed by Minkowski[1963] put more importance

on emotional significance of the language.

 Luria: Different pattern of impairment may depend on the mode of acquiring the
language [Luria 1960]. E.g. primarily spoken Vs written language and whether the
auditory or visual cortex suffered more due to the damage.
However,
 It is difficult to draw much conclusion from this line of research due to the sheer
diversity of results reported.

 Also the assessment of the patient’s linguistic abilities prior to the injury is often
not complete or objective, because it is obtained after injury, from family
members etc.

 Another problem is the lack of systematic assessment of the patient’s all

languages. Standardized test batteries came much later [Bilingual Aphasia Test:
Paradis, 1987] and has improved the situation now.

 At present, there is hardly any consensus about how to interpret polyglot

aphasia evidence.
Data from Electro-Cortical stimulation
mapping:
Electrophysiology
 Electrophysiological techniques bring us much closer to neuronal firing than
other indirect methods like fMRI.

 In fact, sometimes, these technique involves stimulating specific brain parts of

the exposed brain and observing the effect on cognition and behavior.

 The other technique is recording electrical signals of neurons as they unfold

during some mental task.
Direct electrical stimulation
 First performed by Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in late 19th century.

 He mapped functional organization of exposed cortex in epileptic patients prior to

removing the epileptogenic areas.

 One instance: when an electrode was introduced into the cortex of the superior
surface of anterior temporal lobe and a gentle current switched on, the patient
exclaimed, “Oh, a familiar memory…in an office somewhere. I could see the
desks. I was there and someone was calling me … a man leaning on a desk…”
 Following Penfield, neurosurgeon George Ojemann went on to do some
landmark studies on language using direct electrical stimulation.

 The protocol of the study was:

 Line drawings of familiar objects were projected on the screen at 4 second intervals
 Subjects had to name them using the matrix sentence ‘this is a ____.’
 Subjects were 117 patients of epilepsy.
 At the onset of some of the slides, the experimenter stimulated some predetermined
points on the (exposed) cortex.
 Each site was stimulated three times.
 Patients response was recorded for each response.
Results
 In a vast majority of cases, stimulation disrupted naming in only few
discrete sites.

 In 67% of patients, two or more such sites were detected, usually one
in frontal cortex and another in temporal or parietal cortex.

 Precise anatomical locations for sites responsible for naming varied

greatly among subjects.

 This suggests substantial variability across population with regard to

exact cortical locations of language functions.
Intracranial recording
 Used to measure neural activity at the level of single cells, but more often
they are used at the level of cell assemblies.

 One method is electrocorticography.

 This involves placing a high density multi-electrode grid over the cortical
surface.

 This measures the local field potential of cell assemblies that can be
measured with sub-centimeter spatial resolution and millisecond temporal
resolution while the patient performs various linguistic tasks.
Electrocorticography

Source: [Link]
Extracranial recording
 This involves placing an array of electrodes on the scalp.

 Electroencephalography (EEG)

 This picks up the event related potentials (ERP) along the

dimensions of latency, amplitude, polarity and topography
Pic source:
[Link]
[Link]/services/
eeg/1
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
 This alters the organization of neural activity in a target cortical area by
projecting a magnetic field through the overlying skull
 the temporal resolution is in the order of miliseconds and spatial resolution is
in millimeters
 The parameters of the protocol, mainly the frequency of pulses, can be
adjusted so that one can either facilitate or suppress the operation of the
target region

Source: [Link]
Evidence from direct electrical stimulation:

 The evidence comes from epileptic patients

 Before the brain surgery aimed at reducing the frequency of seizures in such patients,
a particular process, called electro-cortical stimulation mapping is followed.
 In this, electrodes are placed on the exposed parts of cortex and electrical stimulation
is administered. The aim is to induce temporary aphasia. As a result, patients show
word finding difficulty, arrested speech, semantic errors etc.
 The practical utility of this process is to find those areas of the cortex that are
responsible for language in order for the surgeon not to surgically remove them,
leading to further difficulty for the patient.
 About 350 patients have been tested using this method, a small number of them
bilingual.
 The issue with this method is that for bilinguals, tests need to be
done for BOTH of the languages of the patient.

 The first such systematic study was reported by Ojemann and

Whitaker [1978] on two patients and by another group in 1983 on a
small number of patients.
 The results:

 These studies documented partially distinct and partially overlapping

cortical representations of the bilinguals’ two languages.
 Which means that electrical stimulation of certain cortical regions
selectively disrupted naming in only one of the languages, while stimulation
in some other parts disrupted naming in both languages.

 However, the particular location for disruption was found to be different

across participants.

 Also, in a small number of patients, a wider area of disruption was found to

be associated with the less proficient language.
 Some recent studies [2002; 2004] also provide evidence to the effect
that there are distinct cortical modules for different languages.

 And, electrical stimulation to specific areas also were found to be

responsible for errors in either L1 or L2.

 Overall, results suggest that cortical representation for L1 and L2

might differ.
Limitations:

 Cortical stimulation is limited to the area of the craniotomy, [i.e. surgical removal
of the skull], thus the area beyond that region is not accessible.
 This kind of stimulation maps only the surface, i.e. the gyrus of the cortex, thus
leaving the sulci and the fissures and hence incomplete in scope.
 Surgical processes are initiated only in patients with long history of epilepsy. So,
there is a possibility that such long illness could have resulted in some neuronal
reorganization, however small.
 Last but not the least, using data from patients on normal populations has its
own risks. Hence, along with clinical data, it is important to test non-brain
damaged individuals to fully understand the organization of language functions in
the brain
Split brain studies: Wada test
 Studying hemispheric differences in bilinguals has been done using the Wada test

 or the sodium amytal test. the chemical sodium amytal is also known as ‘truth
serum’ and is a hypnotic sedative.

 This is injected into the patient’s carotid artery and thus one hemisphere is rendered
inactive for a brief period of time.
 Once the senses come back to the hemisphere, the same process is repeated for
the other hemisphere.
 During the test, the patient is typically asked to name recite well known names of
items, name pictures of common objects, etc. when the left hemisphere is thus
anesthetized patients showed inability to speak for sometime and when the ability
to speak returns, there were speech errors in naming. This was not found in case of
right hemisphere [Ojemann 1978].
 Gomez-Tortosa, 1995 reported: after showing complete speech arrest in left sided
wada test, the patient underwent a blood vessel lesion suregery and later showed
showed signs of deficits only in his native language.

 Berthier, 1990, reported recovery of L2 after L1 after left sided Wada test, but not
after right sided test., suggesting both languages are stored in verbal dominant left
hemisphere.
 On the basis of data from these various studies, it can be safely said that there
are possibilities of L1 and L2 distinct functional localization in the brain.

 However, some functions can also overlap.

 The deciding factors may include variables like age of acquisition, proficiency in
L2 Vs L1 and others.

 Taking all of this into account, Hernandez (2013), Costa (2020) and other
scholars have given a comprehensive account of the bilingual brain.
Module 4 part 2
The story so far …
 So far, we have seen from aphasia data as well as from laterality studies that
neural representation of a bilingual’s two languages may differ.
 We take this forward now with processing studies that look into this issue using
three variables:
 Age of Acquisition
 Proficiency
 Control mechanisms
Age of Acquisition
 French psychologist Ribot is an important name who emphasised the
importance of age, with respect to brain functions.

 Or as he put it: “how our minds are put together”.

 The ‘organic’ type of memory is deeper and more engrained.

 This idea has been taken up in modern day literature in relevant fields with
two main starting points.
Two main points to consider:
One
 Age of initial learning plays a role in adult processing

 This is reflected in the nature Vs nurture debate

 Age constraint has also been found in the way we remember, read or
make decisions about words

 Exposure to particular type of information during critical or sensitive

periods leads to particular type of acquisition
Two
 Ribot’s influence is also seen in studies focusing on how brain changes from
infancy to adulthood.

 Brain develops over time. The question is, which areas develop early and which
develop later in life.
 Hence, a new clearing ground is created where researchers are trying to find out if
there are parallels between AoA of language acquisition and the brain’s developmental
stages.

 In other words, how processing of one’s native vs. second language reflect the
dependence on different areas of the brain.

 Native language processing ~ areas that develop earliest in infancy

 L2 ~ other area that develop later.

 This also answers questions about the sensitive period of learning languages.
Brain areas: sensorimotor mapping
 Occipital lobe: Devoted to visual processing.

 Temporal lobe: Involved in auditory processing.

 Parietal lobe: Transfer point between various sensory areas, is heavily

interconnected.

 Thus, entire back brain is devoted to sensory processing.

 Sensory input comes into the brain via a set of relays.

 Starts with sensory signal arriving at the receptors.

 These receptors convert signals into nerve impulses, transmit them to the
corresponding nerve, then to thalamus, then it relays into the sensory cortex.

 Sensory maps spread out from their respective cortical areas.

 E.g. occipital lobe has primary visual area, which in turn fan out and represent
more and more complex form of visual processing.
 For the visual system, a lower stream extending upto the temporal
lobe is involved in processing objects.

 A superior stream extending up to parietal lobe is involved in

processing location of objects.

 Thus, information is broken into streams of processing.

 This is true for the other types of sensory input as well.

 Posterior parietal areas maintain sensory map of the body.

 The brain also has a motor map.

 Anterior frontal areas maintain the corresponding (of sensory) motor

map.

 These maps do not represent body parts as such, but rather the
amount of stimulation or movement that particular part experiences.

 So, hands have a larger representation in both sensory and motor

maps than the feet.
"homunculus,“ or little man in our brain

Image courtesy: [Link]

homunculus-illustration
Cortex man
If the neural
(sensory and motor)
connectivity was
mapped onto a
human body.

Our eyes and hands

have higher neural
connectivity than
other parts of the
body.

Image copyright: CABRERA research Lab

Source: [Link]
03%3A_Nervous_System_Organization/3.01%3A_Anatomical_Terminology
Importance of sensory motor processing on
brain development
 Brain development is marked by neurological changes.

 In the early stages, the brain produces many neurons and connections between
these, called dendrites.

 Over time, many of these neurons die and the connections are lost, it is called
dendritic pruning.

 Simultaneously, myelin sheath that helps in speeding up electrical signal sent by

axons, increase.
 These markers of neural development do not spread evenly across brain.

 The stages of development as proposed by Best (1988) is like this:

 Right to left
 Primary to secondary to tertiary
 Basal to cortical (middle of brain to cortex)

 Current techniques also confirm these axes of brain development

 In infants, sensory cortices develop earliest in life.

 This is followed by development of sensory bridges in the parietal lobe and motor
cortex in the frontal lobe.

 Most anterior parts of brain in the prefrontal cortex develop the latest among the other
parts.

 Changes keep taking place later in adolescence and adulthood as well, though less
dramatic
Connection to language processing

 Word recognition literature is among the first to take into account the early
development of sensorimotor areas and later development of frontal lobe
functions
Initial experimental data
 Morrison and Ellis (1995) carried out an LDT on monolingual
participants.

 The stimulus was divided into words that were learnt either early and
late (matched on frequency).

 Another set of words were divided as per their frequency rating: high
frequency Vs low frequency (matched on AoA).

 The result reflected effect of AoA but not that of frequency.

 Meschyan & Hernandez (2002) found effect of both AoA and

frequency in picture naming
 Fiebach, Friederici, Muller, von Cramon & Hernandez (2003) showed that
words learnt in early childhood led to activity in Heschl’s gyrus and other
brain areas responsible for speech sound processing.

 Words learnt later relied on brain areas in lower part of inferior frontal lobe,
areas associated with effortful access to meaning.

 This pattern of processing shows a parallel to brain areas’ development, i.e.

sensory cortex develops earliest and prefrontal cortex much later.
 AoA and sensitive period
 Hubel and Wiesel (1963) ground-breaking work found that sensory
deprivation of visual input would lead to long term visual impairment in
cats.

 After this work, many studies that followed found similar evidence of
sensitive period in cats, monkeys, ferrets and also humans.

 Sensory deprivation can also lead to problem in the motor system.

 Studies involving birdsong found there are three stages of learning:

sensory, sensorimotor and crystalized. M.S. Brainard & Doupe (2002).
 Sensory period:
 Bird listens to a tutor for the template.
 Lack of exposure to adult tutors at this stage leads to irregularity in the species
specific characteristics.

 Sensorimotor period:
 Song birds fine tune their songs and fit them into the template.
 Auditory feedback plays a crucial role at this stage.

 Crystalized stage:
 The birds are now adult and sing their species specific songs but cannot learn any
new songs at this stage.

 In sum, this finding points to a critical period of learning.