Author: Dr. Richard Steele

Language processing in Broca’s area during word comprehension tasks is both surprisingly rich in content and complex in operation, according to the newest research. Although historically Broca’s area has been associated with motor planning and execution for speech production, the new findings involve it in other types of linguistic processing: lexical (helping to identify words), grammatical (helping to identify forms, such as plurals or past tenses), and phonological (helping to identify pronunciations). Moreover, these three types of processing happen in rapid-fire sequence — three waves in succession that together span approximately one quarter of a second; they register at approximately 200 milliseconds, 320 milliseconds, and 450 milliseconds after the stimulus on probes in Broca’s area. Such tightly-clustered three-wave patterns of processing in response to linguistic stimuli have not appeared in probes outside of Broca’s area.
Read More

Read More “Topics in Aphasia”.