By Kamil Wiśniewski, Aug. 12th, 2007 Neurolinguistics is a
branch of linguistics dealing mainly with the biological basis
of the relationship of the human language and brain. Although
the very name of this science was coined relatively recently,
the issues investigated by it were analyzed already in the
nineteenth century. The first attempts to account for the parts
of brain responsible for the ability to produce speech were made
on the basis of unfortunate accidents in which people suffered
some damage to head and brain, thus enabling scientists to
exclude the damaged brain parts from linguistic investigations
if the injured remained capable of language production. Since
that time on the basis of posthumous analysis of brains of
people with some language dysfunctions it has been determined
that the left hemisphere of the brain plays a major role in
language comprehension and production, and especially some of
its areas that are more or less above the left ear. In the
following picture of the left hemisphere