https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs da-DK udb@cc.au.dk (Ulf Dalvad Berthelsen) udb@cc.au.dk (Ulf Dalvad Berthelsen) Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 +0200 OJS 3.3.0.13 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2730 ... Ken Ramshøj Christensen Copyright (c) https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2730 Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 +0200 https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2731 The attempt to establish a coherence between the cognitive description of language and thought and the neurobiological description of the human brain is often limited by lacking knowledge concerning the interplay between cognition and emotion – both necessary elements in understanding the way the brain works. Verbal humor is a convenient research object in this regard, as it consists (primarily) in cognitive mechanisms, eliciting an emotional response – laughter. In this article, a review of the history of humor research is compared to a selection of studies (lesion-studies, ERP and fMRI) on the relationship between humor, language and the brain, as an attempt to show how a broadly based theory of humor can help us to understand the relationship between cognition and emotion. Thomas Raab Copyright (c) https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2731 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0200 https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2732 It is a common assumption, also in a Danish context, that sex-differences exist in the way language is processed by the brain. This paper reviews data investigating sex differences in language and language cortex using many different methods. Girls have an early advantage during language acquisition, but this seems to disappear around the age of six years. Differences in the neural underpinnings of language have been reported, e.g. as a greater lateralization of language in males compared to females. This difference is thought to be mediated by a larger corpus callosum in females (the fiber bundle connecting the two cerebral hemispheres). But a look at recent meta-analyses of the findings from this field shows that neither of these assumptions is supported by evidence. Further, larger studies of the regional gray matter distribution in the brain show no systematical language related differences between males and females. Apparent differences can be found in deficits such as stuttering, dyslexia, schizophrenia and autism that have a certain connection to language. Common to these deficits, however, is that language problems seem to be secondary traits. Language function, as measured by the WADA-test, as studied in patients with aphasia and in normal ageing also fails to exhibit sex differences. The overall conclusion therefore is that outspoken sex-differences in language processing is not supported by data. Mikkel Wallentin Copyright (c) https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2732 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0200 https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2733 The syntax of human language is a recursive, generative system. Both of these properties are ubiquitous in the natural world. In fact, sentences, trees, and brains share the property of hierarchical structure (i.e., tree-structure) as a fundamental principle. Aspects of syntax are subject to general constraints on structure which in themselves have no meaning. In contrast, the way we use and manipulate these structures (usually) are meaningful. Another parallel between trees and brains is that they both have bark, in the brain called cortex. I argue that the activation in the "bark" of the brain depends on the nature of the syntactic tree, that is, structural properties of any given sentence. I present results from two neuroimaging studies on sentence comprehension which also provide support for a much more distributed implementation of language in the brain than is usually assumed, especially in neuropsychology textbooks. In particular, comprehension phenomena at the interface between syntax and pragmatics (i.e., between form and function) engage Broca’s area (often called the speech area), whereas purely structural differences in syntactic form engage motor and premotor cortex. Language is a complex system of subsystems (or modules) implemented in the brain as distributed and overlapping networks. Ken Ramshøj Christensen Copyright (c) https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2733 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0200 https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2734 Artiklens sigte er at underkaste Chomskys nyskabende nominale sammensætning – "the mind/brain" – en nøjere undersøgelse. Hovedargumentet er at den skaber en glidebane, således at det der burde være en funktionel diskussion – hvad er det hjernen gør når den behandler sprog? – i stedet bliver en systemdiskussion – hvad er den interne struktur af den menneskelige sprogevne? Argumentet søges ført igennem under streng iagttagelse af de kognitive videnskabers opfattelse af information og repræsentation, specielt som forstået af den amerikanske filosof Frederick I. Dretske. Torben Thrane Copyright (c) https://tidsskrift.dk/tfs/article/view/2734 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0200