Prosodic and narrative processing in American Sign Language: an fMRI study.

ABSTRACT: Signed languages such as American Sign Language (ASL) are natural human languages that share all of the core properties of spoken human languages but differ in the modality through which they are communicated. Neuroimaging and patient studies have suggested similar left hemisphere (LH)-dominant patterns of brain organization for signed and spoken languages, suggesting that the linguistic nature of the information, rather than modality, drives brain organization for language. However, the role of the right hemisphere (RH) in sign language has been less explored. In spoken languages, the RH supports the processing of numerous types of narrative-level information, including prosody, affect, facial expression, and discourse structure. In the present fMRI study, we contrasted the processing of

SUBMITTER: Newman AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2908987 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature