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Developmental Perspectives in Written Language and Literacy: In honor of Ludo Verhoeven
Edited by Eliane Segers and Paul van den Broek
[Not in series 206] 2017
► pp. 17–27

The neural basis for primary and acquired language skills

| Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics | Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Reading is a cultural invention that needs to recruit cortical infrastructure that was not designed for it (cultural recycling of cortical maps). In the case of reading both visual cortex and networks for speech processing are recruited. Here I discuss current views on the neurobiological underpinnings of spoken language that deviate in a number of ways from the classical Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind model. More areas than Broca’s and Wernicke’s region are involved in language. Moreover, a division along the axis of language production and language comprehension does not seem to be warranted. Instead, for central aspects of language processing neural infrastructure is shared between production and comprehension. Arguments are presented in favor of a dynamic network view, in which the functionality of a region is co-determined by the network of regions in which it is embedded at particular moments in time. Finally, core regions of language processing need to interact with other networks (e.g. the attentional networks and the ToM network) to establish full functionality of language and communication. The consequences of this architecture for reading are discussed.
Keywords: neurobiology of language, memory, unification, spoken language network, reading
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The neurobiology of language
  • 3.Connectivity in the language network
  • 4.Beyond the classical model
  • 5.Reading as an extension of the language network
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 21 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.206.02hag
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Mulder, Evelien, Marco van de Ven, Eliane Segers, Alexander Krepel, Elise H. de Bree, Peter F. de Jong & Ludo Verhoeven
2024. Impact of word‐to‐text integration processes on reading comprehension development in English as a second language. Journal of Research in Reading 47:1 ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Verhoeven, Ludo & Charles Perfetti
2022. Universals in Learning to Read Across Languages and Writing Systems. Scientific Studies of Reading 26:2 ► pp. 150 ff. DOI logo

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