Transcript 12 Culture and Identity

Introduction to Psychology
Culture and Identity
Prof. Jan Lauwereyns
[email protected]
What about language on the left?
• Lateralization of Brain Function
• Two hemispheres are not mirror images of each
other
– left hemisphere controls right side of body
– right controls left side
– taste and smell input to same side
• Lateralization is the specialization of labor between
the two hemispheres
– left hemisphere specialized for language
– right specialized for complex visual-spatial tasks
and synthetic processing
• Left brain, right brain
• Why should there be such functional
segregation?
– Advantages of specialisation?
– Of parallel processing?
• Do monkeys have it too?
• Or does it originate with language?
• Handedness and Language Dominance
• Right handedness a heritage
– 10% of people are left-handed or ambidextrous
– 90% of prehistoric drawings show tools in right
hand
– most chimps and other primates are right handed
• Left handers
– have equal as well as left or right hemisphere
dominance for speech
• if right is dominant, left hemisphere contributes more to
spatial perception
– Corpus Callosum is thicker for greater
communication
Not quite as
famous as
Sir Edmund
Hillary,
but…
Where does Corballis get his idea?
• Corticol control of manual movements
• Primates acquiring sign language
• The mirror system in monkeys
• Left hemisphere for speech and hands
• Deaf use sign languages with full syntax
• Nonverbal gestures during speech
• FOXP2 gene mutated about 200,000 years
ago
FOXp2
Where does Corballis get his idea?
• Corticol control of manual movements
• Primates acquiring sign language
• The mirror system in monkeys
• Left hemisphere for speech and hands
• Deaf use sign languages with full syntax
• Nonverbal gestures during speech
• FOXP2 gene mutated about 200,000 years
ago
The mirror system
Ventral premotor
area –
monkey homologue
of Area 44 in
frontal cortex,
that is,
Broca’s Area
Studied by
Rizzolatti and co.
The mirror system
• Neurons in ventral premotor area
• …activated both when the subject performs
an action and when the subject observes
someone else perform the same action
• Abstract action representation
• This system likely plays a role both in
recognising and planning actions (“thinking
about actions”)
Mirror neurons and imitation?
(But monkeys don’t imitate much)
Importance of the mirror system?
• Understanding action?
• Origins of language?
• Empathy?
• Morality?