from Part III - Language and Cognitive Plasticity and Processing
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2025
For centuries, scientists have pondered how humans translate thought into language and where language processes occur in the brain. This chapter focuses on modern advances in both psycholinguistics (the field focused on specifying the psychological processes that mediate language behaviors) and neurolinguistics (the field focused on determining the neural correlates of linguistic skills), with a heavier emphasis on the latter, due to the recent tendency to combine psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic aspects into a single model. Given that both psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics have roots in work started by aphasiologists in the mid 19th century, the chapter begins with a historical overview of the neurobiology of language and aphasia before turning to developments in these fields within the last 20 years. The review centers on contemporary neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic models of semantics, phonology, and syntax and the corresponding evidence for these models drawn primarily from studies of neurologically healthy adults and individuals with aphasia.
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