Modern Views
Neuroimaging suggests the functions earlier attributed to the Wernicke's area occur more broadly in the temporal lobe and indeed happen also in the Broca's area.
| “ | There are some suggestions that middle and inferior temporal gyri and basal temporal cortex reflect lexical processing ... there is consensus that the STG from rostral to caudal fields and the STS constitute the neural tissue in which many of the critical computations for speech recognition are executed ... aspects of Broca’s area (Brodmann areas 44 and 45) are also regularly implicated in speech processing.
... the range of areas implicated in speech processing go well beyond the classical language areas typically mentioned for speech; the vast majority of textbooks still state that this aspect of perception and language processing occurs in Wernicke’s area (the posterior third of the STG). |
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Support for a broad range of speech processing areas was furthered by a recent study done at University of Rochester in which American Sign Language native speakers were subject to MRIs while interpreting sentences that identified a relationship using either syntax (relationship is determined by the word order) or inflection (relationship is determined by physical motion of "moving hands through space or signing on one side of the body"). Distinct areas of the brain were activated with the frontal cortex (associated with ability to put information into sequences) being more active in the syntax condition and the temporal lobes (associated with dividing information into its constituent parts) being more active in the inflection condition. However, these areas are not mutually exclusive and show a large amount of overlap. These findings imply that while speech processing is a very complex process, the brain may be using fairly basic, preexisting computational methods.
Read more about this topic: Wernicke's Area
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