Premature thoughts on writing disorders

Three papers appeared in the 19th century describing the dissociation between speech and writing: Marce (1856), Ogle (1867) and Pitres (1884). An account of the convincing evidence of dissociations put forward in these papers is presented. Three explanations are proposed as to the reason why the observations reported by these authors were overlooked or rejected by their contemporaries, namely: (a) in the first half of the century it seems that very little knowledge of the processes underlying writing (as opposed to speech) was available, (b) the debates focussed on the independence of speech versus motor control and language versus the intellect, (c) parallelisms between phylogeny, ontogeny and aphasia impeded the application of the principle of double dissociations, including the dissociations between speech and writing. It is argued that this phenomenon in the history of aphasia is best captured by the concept of prematurity in scientific discovery proposed by Stent (1972, 2003)

Charles West: a 19th century perspective on acquired childhood aphasia

Dr Charles West was the founder (1852) of the first paediatric hospital in the English-speaking world. In a career spanning four decades, he devoted a great part of his energies to describing the nervous diseases of infants and children. In 1871, West published a series of lectures which focused uniquely on the developmental and acquired language and mental disorders of children. West's clinical experience indicated that acquired aphasia was almost always a transitory condition in children. However, there was one exceptional case which West followed for over 3 years. It represents the youngest case of persistent aphasia described in the modern English medical literature. West's writings reflect a significant early attempt to document and categorise language loss and disturbance in children. In this paper, we detail West's innovations in the description, assessment and treatment of child language disorders

Examining language functions: a reassessment of Bastian's contribution to aphasia assessment

Henry Charlton Bastian (1837–1915) developed his network model of language processing, modality deficits and correlated lesion localizations in the 1860s and was a leading clinical authority for over four decades. Although his ideas are little referenced today, having been overshadowed by his more eminent Queen Square colleague John Hughlings Jackson, his work on aphasia and paralysis was highly regarded by contemporaries. This paper traces Bastian’s lasting but largely unattributed contribution to the development of standardized clinical assessment of language disorders. From 1867 onwards, Bastian trained generations of medical students in neurology. In his 1875 book On Paralysis there is evidence in his case descriptions that Bastian had already implemented a detailed set of procedures for examining aphasic patients. In 1886, Bastian published a ‘Schema for the Examination of Aphasic and Amnesic Persons’. Bastian insisted on the utility of this battery for diagnosis, classification and lesion localization; he argued that its consistent use would allow the development of a patient corpus and the comparison of cases from other hospitals. In 1898 his Treatise on Aphasia included a list of 34 questions that were to be used to examine all patients to provide detailed and systematic evidence of spared and impaired abilities in all receptive and expressive modalities. Bastian’s contribution to the development of standardized clinical aphasia assessment is reassessed through detailed analysis of his publications and those of his contemporaries as well as new material from archives and casebooks. This evidence demonstrates that his approach to diagnosis of language and other cognitive impairments has propagated through the decades. His legacy can be seen in the approach to standardized aphasia testing developed in the latter 20th century through to today

The third man: Robert Dunn’s (1799-1877) contribution to aphasia research in mid 19th century England

Throughout his medical career, Robert Dunn (1799-1877) published a number of clinical cases with post-mortem reports involving acquired language disorders, the first noted in 1842. He developed a physiologically informed approach to psychological function during the 1850s along with a group of notable colleagues Benjamin Collins Brodie, Henry Holland, Thomas Laycock, John Daniel Morell, and Daniel Noble. He was also active in ethnographic research on human origins and racial diversity. As such, Dunn represents an interesting player in the developing fields of neurology, psychology, and anthropology in England in the latter part of the 19th century. These various strands converged at the meeting of the British Association of the Advancement of Science in 1868, where Dunn shared the program of lectures on the cutting edge topic of aphasia with Paul Broca (1824-1880) and John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911). Dunn’s ideas developed over a longer time-frame than his younger colleagues and as such represent a unique blending of concepts from the earlier work of Franz Josef Gall (1758-1828) and Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud (1798-1881) to the perspectives on language organization in the brain developed after 1861

Preserved appreciation of aesthetic elements of speech and music prosody in an amusic individual: A holistic approach

We present a follow-up study on the case of a Greek amusic adult, B.Z., whose impaired performance on scale, contour, interval, and meter was reported by Paraskevopoulos, Tsapkini, and Peretz in 2010, employing a culturally-tailored version of the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia. In the present study, we administered a novel set of perceptual judgement tasks designed to investigate the ability to appreciate holistic prosodic aspects of ‘expressiveness’ and emotion in phrase length music and speech stimuli. Our results show that, although diagnosed as a congenital amusic, B.Z. scored as well as healthy controls (N = 24) on judging ‘expressiveness’ and emotional prosody in both speech and music stimuli. These findings suggest that the ability to make perceptual judgements about such prosodic qualities may be preserved in individuals who demonstrate difficulties perceiving basic musical features such as melody or rhythm. B.Z.’s case yields new insights into amusia and the processing of speech and music prosody through a holistic approach. The employment of novel stimuli with relatively fewer non-naturalistic manipulations, as developed for this study, may be a useful tool for revealing unexplored aspects of music and speech cognition and offer the possibility to further the investigation of the perception of acoustic streams in more authentic auditory conditions

Music and language expressiveness: When emotional character does not suffice: the dimension of expressiveness in the cognitive processing of music and language

Book synopsis: In recent decades, the relationship between music, emotions, health and well-being has become a hot topic. Scientific research and new neuro-imaging technologies have provided extraordinary new insights into how music affects our brains and bodies, and researchers in fields ranging from psychology and music therapy to history and sociology have turned their attention to the question of how music relates to mind, body, feelings and health, generating a wealth of insights as well as new challenges. Yet this work is often divided by discipline and methodology, resulting in parallel, yet separate discourses. In this context, The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind and Well-being seeks to foster truly interdisciplinary approaches to key questions about the nature of musical experience and to demonstrate the importance of the conceptual and ideological frameworks underlying research in this field. Incorporating perspectives from musicology, history, psychology, neuroscience, music education, philosophy, sociology, linguistics and music therapy, this volume opens the way for a generative dialogue across both scientific and humanistic scholarship. The Companion is divided into two sections. The chapters in the first, historical section consider the varied ways in which music, the emotions, well-being and their interactions have been understood in the past, from Antiquity to the twentieth century, shedding light on the intellectual origins of debates that continue today. The chapters in the second, contemporary section offer a variety of current scientific perspectives on these topics and engage wider philosophical problems. The Companion ends with chapters that explore the practical application of music in healthcare, education and welfare, drawing on work on music as a social and ecological phenomenon. Contextualising contemporary scientific research on music within the history of ideas, this volume provides a unique overview of what it means to study music in relation to the mind and well-being

The long view of language localization

For British neurologists, one case was considered to represent significant evidence regarding the organization of language in the brain in the second half of the 19th century. The interpretation of its significance was based on repeated standard clinical assessment of behavioral deficits, the use of a psychological model of processing, and lesion localization to inform understanding of clinic-pathological correlation. The aphasic deficits experienced by a single case were observed and recorded by London neurologist Henry Charlton Bastian (1837-1915) over a period of 18 years, and used as a demonstration of clinico-pathological reasoning regarding language function. This case was well documented in many of Bastian’s publications; presented in teaching demonstrations; included in discussions at medical society meetings and public lectures; and reported widely in the medical press. When this patient died, the autopsy findings were added to the extensive record of his language deficits. Some aspects of the size and site of the lesion were consistent with Bastian’s clinical predictions arising from his model of language processing, while others presented more of a paradox. This single case was a significant source of discussion and reflection in the medical community throughout the second half of the 19th century. Examination of various interpretations of this case reveal the assumptions regarding the functional architecture of language processing, and more general theoretical considerations of how evidence from cases of acquired neurogenic aphasia can be employed in developing such models. This long view into a historical case sheds light on the challenges of clinic-pathological correlation methods difficulties in understanding in the understanding of localization of language functions regarding language processing which remain today

Multiple languages, memory, and regression: an examination of Ribot's Law

Background: In his major work on diseases of memory, Théodule Ribot (1881) offered an explanation of the selective recovery patterns observed in some bilingual aphasic patients. His theory has been cited continuously in the aphasia literature over the past 125 years as one explanation for the relative sparing of an aphasic person's first language. Aims: This paper examines the history of ideas regarding language and memory with respect to understanding bilingual aphasia. Main Contribution: A significant distinction drawn by Ribot between disorders in monolingual and multilingual speakers appears to have been lost. Monolingual aphasic cases were discussed by Ribot under the classification of “partial amnesia”. In contrast, impairments in language with respect to those who had learned multiple languages were classified as “exaltations of memory”, or “hypermnesias”. Examination of Ribot's writings reveals a conceptual approach to memory, learning, and ageing that is distinct from that assumed today. This paper will critically examine these ideas and analyse the sources of Ribot's conceptualisation by placing his work in its historical context, and tracing the antecedents of his theories through the authors he cited. Conclusions: This review of the writings of Ribot, and those of his predecessors, highlights the fact that conceptual distinctions held in the nineteenth century led to research questions that were conceived of in a wholly different light from the present day. It throws into relief the strong distinctions currently assumed to exist between learning languages and learning other information, between first language acquisition and adult second language learning, and between lexical and syntactic knowledge. This investigation into the history of ideas suggests ways to further develop our current approach to account for the multitude of patterns observed in bilingual aphasia