[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/12/7 Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:
> Semantic processes in the brain seem closely associated with a location known as Wernicke's area, normally located behind the left ear. Lesions in this area can cause a condition known as Wernicke's aphasia. Those afflicted with this form of aphasia speak meaningless sentences with normal syntax.
>
> Wikipedia gives this example, presumably taken from an actual case:
>
> "I called my mother on the television and did not understand the door. It was too breakfast, but they came from far to near. My mother is not too old for me to be young."
>
> The person uttering those sentences does not merely get his wrongs wrong; he understands neither the words that he might mean nor the words that he actually speaks. And yet he speaks nevertheless, often fluently.
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> This can happen because while the brain processes semantics in Wernicke's area, it processes syntax and forms sentences in Broca's area. If Broca goes to work while Wernicke goes to lunch, the poor fellow will babble nonsense in good form.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernicke%27s_aphasia
>
> I brought this factoid to post here on ExI because I noticed that a person afflicted with Wernicke's aphasia has much in common with the man in Searle's Chinese Room. Like the man in Searle's room, he follows the rules of syntax but knows not whereof he speaks.

But the man in the Chinese Room does not produce gibberish. He is more
like a properly functioning neuron in the language centres of the
brain, which has no idea of the greater significance of the enterprise
in which it is an essential participant. In other words, the
components don't know what they're doing, but the system does.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou