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Broca's area revisited: Language, selection, and the inferior frontal gyrus

Dr. Sharon Thompson-Schill

Tuesday, October 28, 2003, 01:00pm - 02:00pm

University of Pennsylvania, Department of Psychology

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October 28, 2003 at 1:00 p.m.

Psychology Room 101, Busch Campus

Dr. Sharon Thompson-Schill

University of Pennsylvania, Department of Psychology

Broca's area revisited: Language, selection, and the inferior frontal gyrus

For more than a century, it has been claimed that lesions to the left frontal lobe (i.e., Brocas area") produce linguistic deficits that are characteristically described as "nonfluent", ranging from no language output to truncated, agrammatical phrases. Previous work in our lab has focused on a putative non-linguistic function of this same region of the posterior portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus.� Specifically, we have argued that Broca's area subserves the ability to select between competing alternatives. We are beginning to explore the possible link between this putative selection mechanism and deficits that are commonly linked to so-called Broca's aphasia. I will review the evidence that Broca's area is not specialized for semantic processing (as has been argued elsewhere) but rather is necessary for selection. I will also present some preliminary evidence that some so-called linguistic deficits might be result of failures of a more general selection mechanism.

Dr. Sharon Thompson-Schill