14 DAY TRIAL // University of Arizona Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences assistant professor Stephen Wilson recently managed to figure out in a new study that white brain matter plays a huge role in underlying the way the brain understands language.
White matter pathways have largely gone by ignored by researchers conducting studies in this area of research. Language processing is a very complex process, and specialists preferred to focus their attention on other aspects of the ability.
Yet, this study does demonstrate an interesting connection between white matter pathways and the way a person' s brain relates to, and understands, speech and language. Such a research was only made possible by advancements made in brain-imaging technologies over the past decade.
Previous investigations have revealed that complex cognitive tasks such as this one are processed in specific areas of the brain. These regions are made up of gray matter, and are highly-specialized for their particular purpose, PsychCentral reports.
With the emergence of new technologies, “scientists started to realize that in the language network, there are a lot more connecting pathways than we originally thought,” expert Stephen Wilson says.
“They are likely to have different functions because the brain is not just a homogeneous conglomerate of cells, but there hasn’t been a lot of evidence as to what kind of information is carried on the different pathways,” the team leader goes on to say.
Researchers from the University of California in San Francisco (USCSF) and the Scientific Institute and University Hospital San Raffaele, in Italy, were also a part of the new investigation. The study was focused on two speech-processing areas of the brain called Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area.
The two area apparently connected by two white matter pathways. This has been unknown until now, and researchers say that the finding has significant importance. The team was also able to get an understanding of what each of these connections does.
“If you have damage to the lower pathway, you have damage to the lexicon and semantics. You forget the name of things, you forget the meaning of words. But surprisingly, you’re extremely good at constructing sentences,” Wilson explains.
“With damage to the upper pathway, the opposite is true – patients name things quite well, they know the words, they can understand them, they can remember them, but when it comes to figuring out the meaning of a complex sentence, they are going to fail,” he concludes.