Language

Question 1

What is aphasia?

Answer 1

Disorder of speech

Question 2

Where is language processed in the brain?

Answer 2

Dominant hemisphere (usually left)

Broca’s area
Wernicke’s area

Question 3

What is Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 3

1. Loss of grammar
2. Correct selection of nouns
3. Cannot repeat complex sentences
4. Comprehend language that they hear

Question 4

Where is Broca’s area?

Answer 4

Brodmann’s area 44/45

Question 5

What kind of damage causes Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 5

1. Broca’s area
2. Surrounding frontal fields
3. Underlying white matter
4. Insula and basal ganglia

Question 6

What is Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 6

1. Effortless, melodic and normal rate of speech
2. Unintelligible content
3. Frequent wrong words or phonemes
4. Cannot comprehend sentences

Question 7

Where is Wernicke’s area?

Answer 7

Brodmann’s area 22

Question 8

What kind of damage causes Wernicke’s aphasia?

Answer 8

1. Posterior sector of left auditory association cortex
2. Medial temporal gyrus
3. Underlying white matter

Question 9

What connects Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas?

Answer 9

Arcuate fasciculus

Question 10

What is the arcuate fasciculus

Answer 10

Connects Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas

Fibre tracts

Question 11

What is conduction aphasia?

Answer 11

Damage to fibre tracts connecting Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas

Impairment in repetition of spoken word

Absence of spontaneous speech deficits or word comprehension

Question 12

Which experiments have confirmed the laterality of language processing?

Answer 12

1. Split brain experiments

2. The WADA procedure

Question 13

What occurred in the split brain experiments?

Answer 13

1. Treatment of epilepsy
2. Severed the corpus callosum and anterior commissure
3. Task took advantage of the fact that somatosensory information from the right hand was processed in the left hemisphere and vice versa
4. Object in right hand could be named but object in left could not

Question 14

What kind of stimuli does the right hemisphere primarily respond to?

Answer 14

Non-verbal stimuli

Pictorial

Rudimentary written commands

Question 15

Where is prosody processed?

Answer 15

Right hemisphere

Question 16

What is prosody?

Answer 16

Emotional and tonal colouring of language

Question 17

What is the effect of damage to the anterior right hemisphere?

Answer 17

Inappropriate intonation in speech

Question 18

What is the effect of damage to the posterior right hemisphere?

Answer 18

Difficulty interpreting emotion in speech

Question 19

What is the WADA procedure?

Answer 19

Short acting anaesthetic, such as sodium amytal, injected into right or left internal carotid artery, anaesthetising the ipsilateral hemisphere

Speech then assessed

Enables determination of dominant speech-processing hemisphere

Question 20

What is transcortical motor aphasia?

Answer 20

1. Speak non-fluently

2. Can repeat very long sentences

Question 21

What is transcortical sensory aphasia?

Answer 21

1. Poor comprehension
2. Can repeat sentences
3. Can make grammatical corrections

Question 22

How is the written word processed?

Answer 22

1. Visual cortex
2. Angular gyrus
3. Wernicke’s area

Question 23

Which parts of the brain are activated by passively viewing words?

Answer 23

Striate and extra-striate cortex

Question 24

Which parts of the brain are activated by listening to words?

Answer 24

1. Primary and secondary auditory cortex

2. Wernicke’s area

Question 25

Which parts of the brain are activated by repeating words?

Answer 25

1. Primary motor cortex 2. Supplementary motor cortex 3. Broca's area

Question 26

Which parts of the brain are activated by generating words?

Answer 26

1. Frontal cortex | 2. Temporal cortex

Question 27

What is anomia?

Answer 27

Category-specific naming deficits

Question 28

Where is the greatest volumetric loss of grey matter seen in the brain with ageing?

Answer 28

1. Lateral prefrontal cortex | 2. Hippocampus

Question 29

Where is the greatest loss of white matter seen in the brain with ageing?

Answer 29

Tracts linking fronto-temporal areas

Question 30

Which functional processes become less efficient with age?

Answer 30

1. Speed of processing 2. Working memory 3. Inhibitory function 4. Long-term memory

Question 31

Which functional processes are resistant to cognitive ageing?

Answer 31

1. Conceptual representations | 2. Vocabulary

Question 32

How do age-related auditory deficits impair language?

Answer 32

Peripheral hearing loss reduces auditory signal richness, meaning more central resources are utilised in interpreting the auditory input such that less is available for processing

Question 33

What are the general resources theories?

Answer 33

Cognitive processes share a finite pool of resources 1. Fluid intelligences 2. Working memory 3. Cognitive control

Question 34

What is the degraded signal account?

Answer 34

Stronger emphasis on visual and auditory systems as regulators of cognitive performance in old age

Question 35

What is the result of decline in perceptual processes?

Answer 35

Incomplete or erroneous input Impairs lexical selection Impairs subsequent linguistic processes

Question 36

What is the transmission defect hypothesis?

Answer 36

Connections between representations of words are stronger for those of frequent and recent usage

Question 37

What causes word finding difficulties?

Answer 37

Weak connections between different levels of language representations

Question 38

What is functional compensation?

Answer 38

More bilateral and widespread word-processing in older adults

Question 39

What is elderspeak?

Answer 39

Speech adopted to address older adults to compensate for their deficits 1. Exaggerated intonation 2. Slower speech 3. Repetition 4. Elaboration 5. Shorter sentences with simpler syntax

Question 40

Which aspects of elderspeak are effective?

Answer 40

1. Syntactic simplification 2. Semantic elaborations 3. Repetition