bilateral brain strongprocessesstrong for comprehending natural language.pdfVIP

Opinion TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.9 No.11 November 2005 Bilateral brain processes for comprehending natural language Mark Jung-Beeman Department of Psychology, and Cognitive Brain Mapping Group, Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-2710, USA Comprehension of natural language – stories, conversa- deficits in comprehending natural language (reviewed in tions, text – is very simple for those doing the [3,5]). Third, neuroimaging studies often reveal neural comprehending and very complex for cognitive neuros- activity in the RH during language tasks. Hundreds of cientists. It also presents a paradox: the advantage of neuroimaging studies reveal strong neural activity in the the left hemisphere (LH) for most language tasks is one LH during language tasks [1–4]; but many of these studies of the best-established facts about the brain; yet, when also observe weak signal in homologous (anatomically it comes to comprehending complex, natural language, equivalent) areas of the RH [2,3]. Moreover, a growing the right hemisphere (RH) might play an important role. number of studies report RH greater than LH brain Accumulated evidence from neuropsychology, neuroi- activity while subjects perform higher-level language maging, and neuroanatomy suggests at least three tasks, such as comprehending metaphors [6–9], getting roughly separable (but highly interactive) components jokes [10,11], deriving themes [12], and drawing infer- of semantic processing. Each process in turn has ences [13], generating the best endings to sentences [14] bilateral components, with the RH component perform- ment