TY - JOUR
T1 - Bilateral brain processes for comprehending natural language
AU - Jung-Beeman, Mark
N1 - Funding Information:
I wish to thank many colleagues and several anonymous reviewers. Thanks also to Jeffrey Hutsler for providing the basis for Figure 2 c. This paper was written while the author was supported by grant DC04052 from the National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders, the National Institutes of Health.
PY - 2005/11
Y1 - 2005/11
N2 - Comprehension of natural language - stories, conversations, text - is very simple for those doing the comprehending and very complex for cognitive neuroscientists. It also presents a paradox: the advantage of the left hemisphere (LH) for most language tasks is one of the best-established facts about the brain; yet, when it comes to comprehending complex, natural language, the right hemisphere (RH) might play an important role. Accumulated evidence from neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and neuroanatomy suggests at least three roughly separable (but highly interactive) components of semantic processing. Each process in turn has bilateral components, with the RH component performing coarser computations for the same general process. Examining asymmetrical brain and cognitive functions provides a unique opportunity for understanding the neural basis of complex cognition.
AB - Comprehension of natural language - stories, conversations, text - is very simple for those doing the comprehending and very complex for cognitive neuroscientists. It also presents a paradox: the advantage of the left hemisphere (LH) for most language tasks is one of the best-established facts about the brain; yet, when it comes to comprehending complex, natural language, the right hemisphere (RH) might play an important role. Accumulated evidence from neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and neuroanatomy suggests at least three roughly separable (but highly interactive) components of semantic processing. Each process in turn has bilateral components, with the RH component performing coarser computations for the same general process. Examining asymmetrical brain and cognitive functions provides a unique opportunity for understanding the neural basis of complex cognition.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.tics.2005.09.009
DO - 10.1016/j.tics.2005.09.009
M3 - Article
C2 - 16214387
AN - SCOPUS:27544436661
VL - 9
SP - 512
EP - 518
JO - Trends in Cognitive Sciences
JF - Trends in Cognitive Sciences
SN - 1364-6613
IS - 11
ER -