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.
