Study on Speech Processing

[Another time it seems Kristina and I hooked on the same article. This seemed different enough from what Kristina wrote to still run though. I hope!]

I would take the title of the article "Scientists Reaching Consensus On How Brain Processes Speech" with a warehouse full of salt, but the core idea seems to be that areas of the brain which process speech are starting to be identified (if one can believe the science reporting). The model presented in the article is a "two parallel pathway" idea,

These pathways are dubbed the "what" and "where" streams and are roughly analogous to how the brain processes sight, but are located in different regions, says Rauschecker, a professor in the department of physiology and biophysics and a member of the Georgetown Institute for Cognitive and Computational Sciences.

Both pathways begin with the processing of signals in the auditory cortex, located inside a deep fissure on the side of the brain underneath the temples - the so-called "temporal lobe." Information processed by the "what" pathway then flows forward along the outside of the temporal lobe, and the job of that pathway is to recognize complex auditory signals, which include communication sounds and their meaning (semantics). The "where" pathway is mostly in the parietal lobe, above the temporal lobe, and it processes spatial aspects of a sound - its location and its motion in space - but is also involved in providing feedback during the act of speaking.

If processing speech involves different brainstuffs (e.g., auditory cortex) than processing, for example, writing (or other visually based) or felt language (e.g., Braille), perhaps this suggests why some autistic people (myself included) do significantly better with communication in a non-speech/hearing medium. Speech is not communication--it is simply one way that communication can occur. Speech is also not language, although language can be (but does not have to be) spoken.