From last week's Science Friday
You can probably recognize your friend's voice over the phone with just one "hello" -- but how? Several studies published in the June issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience try to tackle what we do and don't know about the sense of hearing. In this segment, we'll talk about what's going on inside your brain as it attempts to decode the spoken word.
Listen to the broadcast here. (It's on the top left of the page)
Quick thought:
Almost all studies of the sort show that more than 95% of right-handed people house their language center in the left hemisphere of the brain (the more logical side of the brain), where less than 5% have right hemisphere language centers (the more creative side).
Oddly, in left-handed people, over 70% still have left hemisphere language centers. Leaving about 30% of left-handed people with their "language part of the brain" on the more creative side - but not the majority of left-handed people still.
It would be interesting (if it were possible) to see how much this affects how this affects the content (or even style) of those who have language centers on the logical side of the brain to those who have it on the creative side.
Of course, the brain is a network. But the reason we are right or left handed in the first place is mostly determined by whether we use the right or left brain more abundantly. Many of the greatest artists in history (Da Vinci, etc.) were left-handed. How would this hold up with poets? With lawyers? With linguists?
Unfortunately, they usually cannot check which hemisphere the language center resides in until a person is dead or some other severe case. But it's interesting (to me) nonetheless. Why are so many right-handed people left hemisphere language people, and why are the majority of left-handed people also left-hemisphere language people - thought not quite as much?
We've had a couple of recent posts on Language Scraps about Steven Pinker's new book (which I still haven't read). I ran across a brief but interesting article about it in Wired, though, with an engaging headline:
Holy @&%*! Author Steven Pinker Thinks We're Hardwired to Curse.
"Cathartic cursing," as Pinker describes in the article, is what we do when we hit our thumb with a hammer or slam our finger in the door, etc. And he says it's similar to, say, a dog's reaction if you step on its tail. I think we all "curse" in this sense, which is to use vocalizations to respond to the pain. Is whether we say fuck or fudge or fiddlesticks really relevant?
And what drives this? Is it related to pain sensation? I get excruciating suicide headaches that usually last several hours, during the peaks of which I have trouble remaining silent. Somehow, the seemingly unbearable pain is mitigated (at least in my mind) by making some kind of noise. Moaning, groaning, anything--just nothing that requires thought. Or is it that if I don't, the feeling of helplessness to ease my misery is too overwhelming? Is it psychological or physiological? I wonder.
Following up on Scott's post last week about Steven Pinker's new book, The Stuff of Thoughts: Language as a Window into Human Nature, here's a link to the talk that Pinker gave at TED earlier this year, as a preview of his book. See what you think.
I haven't read the book, but this talk was interesting in light of the recent spat between Pinker and George Lakoff, based around a review Pinker wrote last year of Lakoff's book Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea, and Lakoff's response. Are Pinker and Lakoff really that far apart in their conceptualizations of how language and metaphor are linked in the mind? That's for someone smarter than me to decide, but you can check out some responses to the Pinker vs. Lakoff debate here, here and here. Or Google up some more.
