Language in the Brain: Critical Assessments

Description

This book assesses current assumptions about how language is acquired, remembered and retained as impulses in the brain, from the perspective of neurolinguistics, which is based on neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. Fred C. C. Peng argues that language is behaviour, which has evolved in human genetics through time. Like all behaviours, language utilises many body parts which are controlled by the cortical and subcortical structures of the brain. Language in the brain is memory-governed, meaning-centred, and multifaceted. This view is a challenge to conventional neuroscience, which sees language and speech as separate entities; such a convention is not consistent with how the brain functions. Dr Peng's study of language in the brain has wide-reaching implications for the study of language disorders, neurolinguistics, and psycholinguistics in dealing with dementia, aphasia, and schizophrenia. This cutting-edge research monograph presents challenging new insights in the field of neuroscience to a linguistic audience and will also benefit neuroscientists. It will be essential reading for academics researching any aspect of language and the brain.

Fred C.C. Peng is a behavioural neuroscientist in the Department of Neurosurgery and the Neurological Institute at the Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan. As an anthropologist specializing in linguistics, he did post-doctoral work in the basic sciences and medical sciences.

"Peng explores the question "What is language?" from the perspective of neurolinguistics, which is based on neuroanatomy and neurophysiology... For linguists, neuroscientists, and academics researching any aspect of language and the brain." -- Book News: SciTech Book News, March 2006