week 6 assignment

A summary

This article centers on an attempt to use MRI and other imaging technology in the brain to determine more exacting if some aspects of critical thinking specific to comprehending language are just in Wernicke's and Broca's areas or do some language processing neuropathways exist outside of those specific areas. By using “Sixty-four chronic left hemisphere stroke patients were evaluated on 11 subtests of the Curtiss–Yamada Comprehensive Language Evaluation – Receptive (CYCLE-R; Curtiss, S., & Yamada, J. (1988). Curtiss–Yamada Comprehensive Language Evaluation. Unpublished test, UCLA)” as a way to test the ideas whether language processing is limited to those areas or among those areas of the brain. The Patients selected each presented with long term language and mental processing issues, which the research parameters identified those patients with the best chance of being able to use Computer imaging to test the ideas.

An analysis

This specific study revolves around using different measuring tools (some listed some not), different specific damage, and of course the control groups to determine the finer points regarding if the ideas of the study presented merit able statistical results. The results were both inconclusive (there are still many guesses as to if the results were consistent or not) and consistent with expected patterns. The researchers are still unable to determine why the three categories of results exist. Category one no idea what is happening, two inconstancies with the current study and previous studies, three complete consistency with expected results. Why there is uncertainty between the three makes the results inconclusive but consistent with the parameters of the study. Good information but it brings up more questions as it answers.

An application as illustrated in this example

Working specifically within the framework of this study, “Brodmann's area 46, and Brodmann's area 47 of the inferior frontal gyrus” it appears from the study and the layers of measurement tools used up to and including “Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping” in finding out the specific details regarding how each neuropathway affects in this case language processing. What and how do each neuropathway activate and how well when activated does each patients network function. The results were consistent, but many rather large research gaps were stated and in effect ignored with the conclusion.

Reference

Dronkers, N. F., Wilkins, D. P., Van Valin, R. D., Redfern, B. B., & Jaeger, J. J. (2004). Lesion analysis of the brain areas involved in language comprehension. Cognition, 92(1), 145–177. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2003.11.002

Bigler, E. D. (2017). Structural neuroimaging in neuropsychology: History and contemporary applications. Neuropsychology, 31(8), 934–953. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1037/neu0000418.supp (Supplemental)