This chapter complements Chapter 3 in providing neuroimaging and neuropsychological data about language. Here, the focus is on words. It is asked which brain areas become active during, and are relevant for, the processing of words in general, and that of specific word categories in particular.

An aim of this chapter is to show that the neuroscientific principles discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 give rise to new ideas about the representation and processing of words in the brain. The cortex, a neuroanatomically defined associative memory obeying the correlation learning principle, allows for the formation of distributed functional webs. During language acquisition, the neurobiological principles governing the cortex interact to yield the neuron machinery underlying language. Distributed functionally coupled neuronal assemblies, functional webs, are proposed to represent meaningful language units. These distributed but functionally coupled neuronal units are proposed to exhibit different topographies. Their cortical distribution is proposed to relate to word properties. It is asked how this idea fits into evidence collected with modern neuroimaging techniques.

Word-Form Webs

Early babbling and word production are likely caused by neuron activity in cortical areas in the inferior frontal lobe, including the inferior motor cortex and adjacent prefrontal areas. The articulations cause sounds, which activate neurons in the auditory system, including areas in the superior temporal lobe. The fiber bundles between the inferior frontal and superior temporal areas provide the substrate for associative learning between neurons controlling specific speech motor programs and neurons in the auditory cortical system stimulated by the self-produced language sounds.