Ling 411 – 15
Questions, Feedback, Issues
Functional webs
Questions from students
Other responses to short papers
Question about Broca’s aphasia
Broca aphasics have difficulty articulating speech. While
their production is good, if they have difficulty
comprehending words they omit in speech production,
then how can their comprehension possibly be good?
More Questions
How does neural firing affect a frequency of spikes?
Why did humans develop both a phonics route and a whole
word route?
Can words represented by the phonics route have direct
access to meaning?
Reading – relating writing to speech
Phonological
word image
Phonemes
The “Phonics” route
Letters
Reading – relating writing to speech
Phonological
word image
Graphic
word image
The “whole word” route
Letters
Two pathways for relating writing to speech
Phonological
word image
Graphic
word image
Phonemes
Letters
Redundancy?
Two pathways for relating writing to speech
 The “whole word” route is necessary for
• caught
• island
• sign
 The “phonics” route is needed for long unfamiliar words
• commissurectomy
• prosopagnosia
• magnetoencephalography
Pathway to meaning
Conceptual
information
Phonological
word image
Graphic
word image
Phonemes
Letters
Two pathways to meaning
Conceptual
information
Another pathway
Phonological
word image
Graphic
word image
Phonemes
Letters
Evidence for direct connections between meaning
and graphic form
 Patient D.R.B. (above)
• Judgments of synonymy better for pairs of
written words than pairs of spoken words
 Patient R.G.B (next slide)
 Patient H.W. (904)
Yet more questions
 How does ERPs work?
 Is PET the worst imaging type still being used? If so, what
makes it an attractive measurement tool?
 What would happen if the wires of an MEG machine had
high resistance?
 Why must so many trials be conducted for each condition
in an MEG test?
 Is this necessity not a limitation of the MEG?
Two more
 15.What functions does ‘monitoring’ from the
somatosensory mouth area serve?
 16.What types of associations does the angular gyrus
make?
From another student: Cardinal nodes
In the class, you mentioned that every functional web has a
cardinal node. In the figure you showed in the class, it seems that
all the visual nodes are connected to a visual cardinal node. I'm
wondering whether there is any evidence to support this
assumption about cardinal nodes. If the visual cardinal node is
impaired but all the visual nodes are intact, what deficit would a
patient show? In the figure, it seems that once the visual cardinal
node gets damaged, there is no way to get the visual information
to the upper level. Furthermore, if there is a visual cardinal node,
where does it localized? in occipital lobe? which part?
Two different patients with anomia
Inability to retrieve words
for unique entities
Deficit in retrieval
of animal names
(Left temporal lobectomy)
(Damage from stroke)
Two more patients with anomia
Deficit in retrieval of
words for man-made
manipulable objects
(Damage from stroke)
Severe deficit in retrieval of
words for concrete entities
(Herpes simplex encephalitis)
Conceptual category dissociation I
(from Rapp & Caramazza 1995)




J.B.R. and S.B.Y. (905b-906a)
Herpes simplex encephalitis
Both temporal lobes affected
Could not define animate objects
• ostrich, snail, wasp, duck, holly
 Much better at defining inanimate objects
• tent, briefcase, compass, wheelbarrow,
submarine, umbrella
 How to explain?
Conceptual category dissociation II
 J.J. and P.S. (Hillis & Caramazza 1991) (906-7)
• J.J. – left temporal, basal ganglia (CVA)
 Selective preservation of animal concepts
• P.S. – mostly left temporal (injury)
 Selective impairment of animate category
P.S
J.J.
More on cardinal nodes
I'm also very interested in the concept cardinal node.
In the figure you presented in the class, all the cardinal
nodes related to a specific concept are connected to
this concept cardinal node. I have the same question
for this concept cardinal node. If it gets damaged, will
the person lost the concept even though all other
cardinal nodes related to this concept are intact? I'm
very curious about the evidence from
neuropsychology.
Functional webs vis-à-vis
the linguistic-cognitive network
 Linguistic-cognitive network
• The whole information system
• Occupies all of both hemispheres
• Plus subcortical structures
• Covers all the information and skills of a person
• And all the linguistic knowledge and ability
 Functional web
• A specific selected portion of the network that is
devoted to a specific function
 For example, the information and processing
associated with one word
Pulverműller’s functional webs and enhancements
 The theory of functional webs presented in class is
largely in agreement with that of Pulverműller’s theory
 What I presented is certain enhancements:
• Clearer definition of node
 Pulverműller: a group of neurons
 Lamb: a cortical column
• Hierarchical structure
 Goes along with the general hierarchical
structure of the network
• Well established
• Cardinal nodes
 Follows from hierarchy
 The node at the top of the hierarchy
Relationships among functional webs
 How is the functional web related to the general network?
 What is going on when we ignite two or more functional
webs at the same time?
• ‘the dog is chasing that cat’
• They are both activated, yet they must remain distinct
The beauty of network structure
 Consider the concept BLACK
 A property of charcoal, some cats, some dresses, etc.
 Therefore, it is part of the functional web for a lot of
things
 In a symbolic representation of linguistic-cognitive
structure, it has to get repeated for each of them
 In a network representation it is there only once
Determinacy and free-will
 The issue that is hard to shake when considering these
neural networks is the physical determinacy of it all. …
 However, by claiming that these nodes deeper within the
functional web are activated according to a causal chain of
physical events- which is certainly a reasonable enough
claim, to be sure- we are actually claiming further and
much more profound.
 If our minds are patterns of spreading physically
determined activation, then only one future course of
activation is possible given any particular combination of
stimulations … at a particular moment.
 If an alternate pattern of activations is not possible, then
in at least one philosophically important sense, no such
being is capable of exercising free will.
end