Language and thought are not the same thing: evidence from neuroimaging and neurological patients

Evelina Fedorenko, Rosemary Varley
2016 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences  
words) Humans are endowed with a rich repertoire of cognitive abilities. Many of these are shared with other animals, while a few appear to be unique to our species. Among the latter is our ability to translate complex thoughts into language, a code that allows us to exchange those thoughts with one another, plausibly laying the foundation of human culture and civilization. Given that language evolved against the backdrop of many evolutionarily older systems and mechanisms, a natural question
more » ... ises as to the degree to which our language system is separable from other cognitive systems. In particular, does language rely on a set of specialized brain regions, or does it share neural machinery with other functions? Based on converging evidence from neuroimaging studies and investigations of individuals with aphasia, we here argue that a set of brain regions on the lateral surfaces of the left frontal and temporal cortices selectively support high-level linguistic processing. We therefore conclude that language is separable from the rest of the cognitive arsenal in the adult human brain.
doi:10.1111/nyas.13046 pmid:27096882 pmcid:PMC4874898 fatcat:z35aguu4jbfmxo43n7t3qxlelu