What We Often Get Wrong About the Brain's "Language Centers" 

As someone with a blocking stutter, I'd love for more videos on speech and speech impediments. It's hard to explain it to someone when you cant really talk.

When I was younger I would occasionally speak absolute nonsense when getting up early in the morning. I remember waking up, walking into the living room, my dad was getting ready for the day and asked if I was almost ready, now I thought I was responding with "yeah I just gotta go to the bathroom." But my dad just stared at me. I'm not sure exactly what came out as my words weren't slurred and I thought I had pronounced everything fine. But he swears that I sounded like I was speaking spanish.

Aaah that's so interesting. We didn't even learn that in medical school! But that makes so much sense as the Wernicke area is interconnected with the auditorial cortex. I couldn't imagine talking and being so desperate why no one seems to understand what you are saying. It's like a horror movie.

When I was 18, one day during lunch, I lost the feeling in my left hand. Then my left foot. Then my speech started getting worse. I couldn’t get words out, and was fully aware that I couldn’t. Went to the ER. Told the doctor I think I’m having a stroke. He smirked and said “You’re not having a stroke,” Until I told him the symptoms. By this time I had a headache on the right side of my head. He was still skeptical because he would expect that a stroke would have to be on the left side of my head in order to impact language. He asked if I was left handed. I nodded yes. That’s when he ordered a CT scan. I guess the speech center can be reversed in some left handed people? Anyway, yes. I was having a stroke. It turned out to be caused by a brain tumor. An astrocytoma. I had brain surgery (right parietal craniotomy) 2 days later. It took a year and a half for my speech to be at about 90%. 5 years to be at about 95% percent. About 10 years after the surgery to be at about 99%. But even longer to be able to mentally heal from the soul-crushing event to carry on a conversation with confidence. The feeling in my left foot fully returned. My left hand is still numb.

I work as a speech and language pathologist at a hospital, mainly in the stroke ward where I among other things diagnose aphasia. You'd me amazed how few textbook examples (even by modern research) of aphasias, in corellation to lesion sites, that we see. The brain is glorious, mysterious and scary all at the same time. 🤷‍♂️

On a related note, I often hear people on the topic of bilingualism talk about thinking in a specific language, but I don't think that's the best way to describe it. We do have an internal monologue, and that can be in one language or another, or multiple at once, but our thoughts are something different. Our thoughts exist independent of language. Language is just one of the tools we use to communicate, organize, and process those thoughts. This is why you can have a "tip of the tongue" moment. You have a thought, but you're struggling to find the word for that thought. The thought exists independent of your ability to communicate it. Language is an extremely useful tool, but sometimes it's worth remembering that there's a whole lot that our brains are capable of independent of language. You can think thoughts that you have no words for.

As I have epilepsy, i found out that I have bilateral speech centers (ie: two), the left one has a lesion on it (just some extra cells), so the position is in Wernieke's area behind my left ear. It is interesting to note that it took some time for my language skills to develop and my ability read/write (Came to me with a lot of practice by the time I was 13 years old). I am also dyslexic, which might have something to do with the two speech centers interferring with each other.

Thank you for this episode! I have a degree in Linguistics, and this was one of my favourite areas of study- especially seeing videos of cases of Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia. But trying to explain these to my friends and family can be difficult without them having a linguistic background and education, so having a clear easy video to show them is amazingly helpful!

There’s bound to be a joke about pokemon character speeches in here somewhere

pikachu: pika pikaaa!!! tan: tan taaan!!!!

Spot on! Great to finally see a video on my own field of study and to get the reassurance that other videos are likely as well-researched as this one is!

After a very mild stroke,my husband"lost"his English.He didn't lost his French,who was his first foreign language to learn.English was his second.....

Is this the case for just spoken language or does the same thing apply for sign language as well?

Hank, first thing in the morning I watch you and love how you ruin my day with knowledge.

Tan is like a real life Groot. He just doesn’t have a raccoon who understands him :(

In my bipolar disorder, one of the classic symptoms (confirmed by my psychiatrist) is "losing my words." I'll be in a conversation explaining something, then I'll start doing the "tip of the tongue" thing with every word, even with regular words as much as specialized lingo and jargon. But especially jargon. Bipolar brains are shown to have a different MRI than "normies." I saw two MRI's side by side in a book, one bipolar and the other normal. I couldn't tell a difference, but the text said a bipolar brain gets less oxygen than a normal brain. Who knows? There needs to be more research to see. But this losing my words thing needs to be studied much more, along with "default." In "default," I will make a plan with someone, say dinner at Calhoun's at 8 on Friday. Later we both agree that another plan is better, and plan for dinner and a movie starting with the movie at the Village 8 at 6 pm and dinner at Panera Bread afterward. I'll go to dinner at Calhoun's at 8 pm and wonder where my date is. My date will already be at Village 8,maybe missed a movie, then gone home frustrated because I didn't show up. Later there would be the inevitable argument where my date would say the second plan was right and I'd say the first was right. I could swear up and down that the first one was firm, and the second one had never been made. Not that I could remember that we did make a different plan, but that the first one was absolutely what we planned. Only after intense remembering (and I do mean *intense!* would I remember that oh, yeah (pained, humiliated face), we did make that second plan. This has happened at work, on meetings and dates, in many instances. Because of this, I rely on my phone calendar a lot, and for very important appointments, I'll ask over and over to make sure I have it straight. When I've defaulted and come early, all that did was inconvenience me, and I'll make sure I get it right with my reminding techniques. But when the appointment is moved up, I can be sunk by that. But I keep trying. That's all I can do at this time. I hope someone can come up with something that will allow me to overcome these important issues. If not for me then for the many people who have bipolar, especially the 30-somethings and younger.

So if Hodor came from "Hold the door", where did Tan Tan come from?

Thank you so much! Though I already learnt about this during my bachelor studies when I was studying psycholinguistics, I had recently attended another course at a new university where even the professor told us about how language production and comprehension resides in these areas, without differentiating these statements at all. Almost everything he said was vastly messed up and debatable but I already started to think that I had remembered things wrong. Thanks for clearing it up again.

It's great to see you again 😇 I used to enjoy watching your psychology videos on crash course

Every now and then, I'll have a word that I know how it should sound, but can't get my mouth to work right to say it right.

Can you do video on reward circuit of the brain or "reward system"?

I am surprised and touched by the many earlier commenters who have language or speech impairments. They have been bravely honest about things which I take for granted, and arrogantly pride myself on. I should be more grateful that I was born with such a marvellous skill through no effort of my own.

2:52 me - after mild traumatic brain damage where i lost consciousness for 30 seconds and sustained a depressed skull fracture on my right-side, temporal cranium, I returned to school with no medical inspection, and suffered the loss of speech and comprehension, aside from the excruciating migraines that frequently attacked. that was the worst pain i've ever been in; it was like my brain was on fire, and I had to concentrate my mind on dissociating from the pain. It was horrible. It was decades later until I could feel comfortable speaking coherently, before which people considered me merely "shy". Nah, it was just hard to speak.

Hi! Loved this video, thank you! Could you make one on written music and the brain?

i love video!! psycholinguistics is very very interesting and it's crucial to child development!! nice one!!

Woohoo! I've been waiting for a video like this! I seem to require more effort than others to interpret the sounds someone is making and comprehend the words, and also make sentences and retrieve words from my memory. When im tired it's super hard to speak coherently. Now i have a name of something to look into. :D

I have trouble reading out loud from a book to people.. i can't articulate words on the page and it's exhausting ...

You should do a video on Auditory Processing Disorder because not many people know about it and/or understand it too well. (I have it)

One of my parents' neighbours (now sadly passed away) had a series of strokes some time ago, and it severely affected his ability to communicate. He could easily understand speech and knew what sentences he wanted to say, but found it almost impossible to vocalise any word he wanted to say, so he'd often say gibberish peppered with lots of loud profanity and "I love you" (completely without context). It was very sad to see him struggle so much. I always wondered what must've happened to his brain to make him that way, so I'm really glad I stumbled on this video.

There have been a lot of findings on fascia and it would be great if you did a video on that (as it also pertains to the mind, introception, etc)

My uncle had a stroke last year and is going to therapy to speak properly again. He always spoke quickly and that hasn't changed, but now he says approximations of what he's trying to say. "Do you want us to grab your keys for you?" "Very much, yes, yes." "What did you do at your old job?" "Cars. Money with cars." (selling cars) The nice thing is that he hates being treated like a child and once we understood it was just his speech and a few other small things, we were able to communicate more effectively without making him feel coddled.

Can you believe that Hank Green is nearly 40 years old? FORTY THIS MAY!!

Nice!

With current research pointing to the existence of a number of areas of the brain that are concerned with language processing come recent studies indicating that dyslexia is caused by mis-timing of signals between some of those areas. It also points out that we're actually gathering words and prepping sentences in our minds microseconds before we actually have to ask someone to mass the pilk.

2:16 Little Known Fact: That second patient, the one who presented with similar symptoms as did Tan, was mockingly called Bam, for all of the same reasons. And the damage to Bam's language center had been caused when Bam had accidentally hit himself in the side of his head with a wooden club. 🤔

Can you do a video explaining the "big five" personality traits? And what testing for them basically gets you?

You should definately make a video on APD (Auditory Processing Disorder). It is a disorder affecting mostly children and elders, causing learning disabilities, and related to autism and ADHD. It affects processing of sound on a sensory level and disrupts speech processing in challeging environments, such as high levels of noise, or reverberation. I could help you pointing on certain pieces of current research papers.

What if I have trouble forming words but can with enough effort and yet still understand all syntax, grammar and spelling? What type of aphasia would that be called? Are there even names for different types of aphasia?

I hope they update their courses in cognitive and neuropsychology in Psychology degree ... I used to study this way when I was in psychology in Paris and it was a bit off ...

Dang. This was quite interesting, but I was hoping for more insight into what I call my, "bad English" moments. Every now and again, I simply lose my ability to understand English (my mother tongue). I still recognize that the person is speaking English, and I might catch a word or two, but generally I need to get the person to repeat themselves, sometimes a few times, before I can understand them. It's super frustrating.

If you're interested in a more differenciated model of the isolatable "modules" of language processing obtained according to aphasia case studies, have a look at Ellis & Young (1988)'s "Human Cognitive Neuropsychology".

I get migraine auras without headaches. At the tail end, there's usually another effect (tingling, numbness, etc). A few times though, it has messed with my ability to write and read. I temporarily forgot how to write words (for instance, 'writing' became 'switing') and reading comprehension was greatly impaired - I could read but not put the meaning to the words I was reading. I was however able to talk and understand other people talk perfectly fine. Would love to know what area the cortical spreading depression reaches for that to happen, there's not much info on these secondary effects. I found it very interesting because my vocal language understanding was unaffected, but reading and writing was very impaired, seeming to indicate those are processed differently.

Pobody's Nerfect!

Can u do a video in stammering please

Also, could you expand on aphasias?

I did a study for a local university because I had aphasia after I woke up from a coma (I couldn’t speak for a while, but I understood everything said to me).

Would be curious how communications between different regions are accomplished.

sooo i have a question, Is this the are responsible of our internal voice in our head when we think?

5:15 E. Henry Thripshaw's Disease.

You know, we were just talking about these areas in my psych class yesterday, weird

It's like the DS9 episode "Babel".

Can you please associate the current physiological brain loci you mentioned with the FOXP2 gene aphasias? How does an extreme FOXP2 mutation - such as in the KE family - alter the physical brain? or does it?

I have an issue that I’ve always called an aphasia, but I don’t know what it really is. I can’t think of the right words when speaking. And it seems to only be nouns. I’ve learned to just say “noun” and move on, because if I waited for the word to come, we’d be there all day. It seems to be hereditary., as most people on my mom’s side of the family have similar struggles.

Why is it that singing seems to use other language centers? I've read that people with stuttering issues can don't stutter when singing or that some people who have strokes on their left side and have speech issues can still sing. What's going on in the brain?

Did the people who were speaking/hearing gibberish understand written stuff? Or did that get mixed up too?

Does this apply to all language or just spoken/written language? Does sign language use the same parts of the brain?

So does this include Spoonerisms and malapropisms?

1:36 ...and editor and president of Muttonchop Enthusiast Monthly.

What I'd like to know is why you engage in so much arm waving when you speak. Where does that come from? Your arm waving and speech appear to be in sync, so their has to be somesort of connection. I'd be interested to know if putting your hands in your pockets would create a speech impediment for you.

So.. Tan broke his Broca.

*Vernicke's area*

meaning grades into articulation and articulation grades into meaning

Hank, you should do an episode about the history of phrenology and why it is dumb.

huh, so there is precedent for the two character duo where one speaks gibberish/random noises, and then number 2 is the only person that can understand the first.

I would like to know how left handed brains differs from rgiht handed, i'm a leftie btw

how did he get access to the new brain ? 2:16

*_...stranger about this subject, is the notion that stereotyped 'language functions' are used to describe near-continuous-masses-of-neural-nets-using-100's-of-neurotransmitters-all-contributing-to-the-processation…_*

I tend to speak gibberish when I'm tired or getting a migraine. I mix words, syntax and grammar from different languages that I speak, plus I mix up the order of syllables or letters in words. Takes me time to realise why people give me funny looks. Migraine pills take away the pain but leave the gibberish-speaking there

So if people will damage to Wernicke's area can understand language but can't speak coherent sentences, if you recorded what they said and played it back to them would they understand it?

We can always count on kids to make us feel like complete idiots.

I wonder if being “tone-deaf” is related to these areas of the brain, as well. We all know someone who thinks they can sing on key, but everyone else knows they’re off key.

6:10 5:05 my dear / mind you

Brain? What is Brain?

Did I just hear Hank has a son? 😮

Is there correlation between being attractive and And having mental disorders By way Of a strong immune system That accidentally attacks the wrong Part of the body And/or brain?

I am TAN. I AM TAN. I AM TAN. i aM Tan....Groot's long lost uncle

💙💙💙

I don't comprehend instructions, period.

That's all fun and games *BUT* is it me or did Hank get a haircut? 🤔

I thought it was /tɑ̃/.

Oh no this shirt is messing with my OCD! I want it!

¿Hay bilingües or multilinguals здесь? 🤔

Well......CAN you mass me the pilk? I have to know.

I learned all of this in a basic university class on neuro- and patholinguistics in 2012. It is in the textbooks we used. Also, neuroplasticity.

*I am Groot*

all my teachers have said *W*ernicke, not *V*ernicke, but that actually makes so much sense....brain broken

Tan tan. I am Groot. Tan tan. I am Groot. Tan tan. I am Groot.

僕は日本語が大好きです、日本語は学び。

As with all Sci Show vids, I thought this was great, easily comprehensible and worthwhile watching. My question is: why are people so sh*t at explaining things with an apparent aphasia to even realise just how sh*t of a job of explaining things they are doing? This is fine if it doesn't matter really if people should be interested or not in understanding what is being explained. But if it is about an issue that is really important - like the survival of a political party in the UK for example that is suppose to be representing workers interests - then it puts a depressing onus on those trying to comprehend any explanations to effectively take over the job of the person so poorly explaining... A bit of a task when having to understand from scratch and/or if they are sceptical in the first place. Like "I have no interest in what you are saying, but despite not having your expertise I spent a whole week on google trying to understand so I could explain it to your audiance because I felt so bad for you...."

great vid, learn sign language if you're going to flail around like that.