Why the speech center of our brain shuts down when we talk

In the left hemisphere of our brain is a special area, known as Broca's area, which is the speech center. But a recent study by neuroscientists from new York University have discovered a great oddity in his behavior – when we say, this zone is disabled.

The team at new York University, headed by Dr. Edin Flinker published its findings in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences". During their experiments, the scientists recorded data of brain activity directly from the cortex of the brain and their observations showed that during an actual conversation Broca's area is disconnected.

The researchers conducted many tests using short, long and even absolutely meaningless words – but the results showed the same thing: Broca's area are active before the person begins to speak, and when he thinks about how to start talking. But not during the conversation itself.

This is opening a whole fit into the picture that is being formed in neuroscience. In the brain there is no single area responsible for speech, because the brain works more as a network than as a set of isolated sites. Broca's area in this case is only one of the important components of the speech system. Therefore, Flinker and his colleagues used to study the activity of this area of technology network analysis.

This approach allowed them to establish that Broca's area "provides communication and data integration among several different areas of the cerebral cortex, and thus all its activity takes place before the moment of pronouncing of words".

"When we speak aloud a single word, Broca's area aktiviziruyutsya before his utterance and is disabled during articulation, which takes the motor cortex. When we say meaningful sentences, area, seem to function during the entire speech, but was not involved in direct coordination of the movements of our mouth – instead, she is always a step ahead and integrates information across the cerebral cortex, preparing complex proposals, we are going to say," explains Plinker.

 

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Source: gearmix.ru/archives/18354