Neurolinguistical virus

Adults who have had brain damage and become aphasic recover more slowly than children who have had the same kind of damage, but they continue to improve slowly over decades if they have good language stimulation and do not have additional strokes or other brain injuries.

What about dyslexia, and children who have trouble learning to talk even though they can hear normally? Why do people have reading difficulties? Research suggests that dyslexics have trouble processing the sounds of language and have difficulty relating the printed word to sounds. There is solid evidence that appropriate language-based therapy is effective for children with developmental disorders of reading and language, including stuttering.

This new information has become available because of major improvements in our ability to see what is happening in the brain when people speak or listen, and from the accumulation and analysis of many years of detailed aphasia test data. For over a hundred years, research in neurolinguistics was almost completely dependent on the study of language comprehension and production by people with aphasia. These studies of their language ability were augmented by relatively crude information about where the injury was located in the brain.

Neurologists had to deduce that information, such as it was, by considering what other abilities were lost, and by autopsy information, which was not often available. Early-generation computerized x-ray studies CAT scans, CT scans and radiographic cerebral blood-flow studies angiograms began to augment experimental and observational studies of aphasia in the s, but they gave very crude information about where the damaged part of the brain was located.

These early brain-imaging techniques could only see what parts of the brain had serious damage or restricted blood flow. They could not give information about the actual activity that was taking place in the brain, so they could not follow what was happening during language processing in normal or aphasic speakers. Studies of normal speakers in that period mostly looked at which side of the brain was most involved in processing written or spoken language, because this information could be gotten from laboratory tasks involving reading or listening under difficult conditions, such as listening to different kinds of information presented to the two ears at the same time dichotic listening.

Since the s, there has been an enormous shift in the field of neurolinguistics. With modern technology, researchers can study how the brains of normal speakers process language, and how a damaged brain processes and compensates for injury. This new technology allows us to track the brain activity that is going on while people are reading, listening, and speaking, and also to get very fine spatial resolution of the location of damaged areas of the brain. Fine spatial resolution comes from magnetic resonance imaging MRI , which gives exquisite pictures showing which brain areas are damaged; the resolution of CT scans has also improved immensely.

For some purposes, the best method is detecting the electrical and magnetic signals that neurons send to one another by using sensors outside the skull functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI; electro-enecephalography, EEG; magnetoencephalography, MEG; and event-related potentials, ERP. Another method is observing the event-related optical signal, EROS; this involves detecting rapid changes in the way that neural tissue scatters infra-red light, which can penetrate the skull and see about an inch into the brain.

A third family of methods involves tracking the changes in the flow of blood to different areas in the brain by looking at oxygen concentrations BOLD or at changes the way in which the blood absorbs near-infrared light near-infrared spectroscopy, NIRS. Brain activity can also be changed temporarily by transcranial magnetic stimulation stimulation from outside the skull, TMS , so researchers can see the effects of this stimulation on how well people speak, read, and understand language.

TMS also appears to be safe. It is very complicated to figure out the details of how the information from different parts of the brain might combine in real time, so another kind of advance has come from the development of ways to use computers to simulate parts of what the brain might be doing during speaking or reading. Investigations of exactly what people with aphasia and other language disorders can and cannot do also continue to contribute to our understanding of the relationships between brain and language.

For example, comparing how people with aphasia perform on tests of syntax, combined with detailed imaging of their brains, has shown that there are important individual differences in the parts of the brain involved in using grammar. Also, comparing people with aphasia across languages shows that the various types of aphasia have somewhat different symptoms in different languages, depending on the kinds of opportunities for error that each language provides.

A study of syntactic processing in aphasia I: Behavioral psycholinguistic aspects. Brain and Language , A study of syntactic processing in aphasia II: Neurological aspects. Reading in the Brain. Viking Press. Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. Vintage Books. Understanding Aphasia. Academic Press. Hickok, Greg.

The functional neuroanatomy of language. Physics of Life Reviews, 6, — January, D. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21 12 , PMID: Plural Publishing. Novick, J. Language and Linguistics Compass. Music, Language, and the Brain. Ramus, Franck. Genes, brains and cognition: A roadmap for the cognitive scientist.

Cognition , Schwartz, Myrna F. A case-series test of the interactive two-step model of lexical access: Evidence from picture naming. Journal of Memory and Language, 54, Tse, C. If you try NLP as part of your efforts to deal with your social anxiety, consider contacting a wellness coach who uses this technique or reading a self-help book on the topic and trying it yourself.

Once again, NLP should not be used in place of validated treatments. Learn the best ways to manage stress and negativity in your life. Karunaratne M.

Neuro-linguistic programming and application in treatment of phobias. Complement Ther Clin Pract. Konefal J, Duncan RC. Social anxiety and training in neurolinguistic programming.

Psychol Rep. Steinbach, AM. Neurolinguistic programming: A systematic approach to change. Canadian Family Physician. Neurolinguistic programming: a systematic review of the effects on health outcomes. Br J Gen Pract. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback!

Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles.