Wernicke's area
From Psy3242
Contents |
History
This area was first identified by Carl Wernicke in 1874, after studying the aphasia caused by damage to Broca�s area. He distinguished different types of aphasia, such as fluent aphasia and conduction aphasia that resulted from damage to this part of the temporal lobe. The location of Wernicke�s area is described as the posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus on the left hemisphere, immediately behind Heschel�s gyrus.
Purpose
Wernicke�s area is responsible for linking speech sounds to stored representations of words. This area has neural pathways to Broca�s area, which is involved in the generation of speech, and the angular gyrus, which is important in understanding visually represented material. Wernicke�s area receives the processed speech sounds from Heschel�s gyrus, which come from the ears, to be referenced to actual words.
Disorders
Damage to Wernicke�s area causes language disorders, namely Wernicke�s aphasia. This results in problems with fluent but non-sensical speech, from the ineffective monitoring of self-generated speech; and difficulties in understanding spoken language, from damage to one�s auditory memory of words. The disordered speech is characterized by neologisms, non-words or made-up words, and paraphasias, semantically related but inappropriate words.
Later Research
Lichtheim�s later research yielded a model that linked Broca�s area and Wernicke�s area on a triangle with the third point being a concept center, in order to map the different types of aphasia resulting from damage to the connections between the three.
