ABSTRACT
A major theme of this book is the extent to which there are biological constraints on the nature of language. Damage to perisylvian areas within the left hemisphere produces various types of aphasia, language disorders caused by brain injury. Data from studies with normal Deaf signers also indicate left-hemispheric specialization for sign language processing. All of the studies investigating hemispheric specialization for sign language, from lesion studies to neural imaging, have found that language areas within the left hemisphere are recruited for sign language processing. Such findings imply that these particular brain areas are well designed to process linguistic information independent of language modality. The pattern of linguistic deficits observed with left-hemisphere damage does not appear to simply be a function of deficits in general spatial cognitive ability. For Event-Related Brain Potentials (ERPs) technique, electrodes are placed on the scalp to record the electrical potentials of large populations of neurons within the brain.
