From head to mouth 600 milliseconds

2009/10/20 Lakar Iraizoz, Oihane - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Anatomia/Fisiologia

The brain needs about 600 milliseconds to speak, that is, to think the words, to use the grammatical rules and to say the words correctly. This has been seen by researchers from the Donders Institute of the Dutch Brain and the Max Plank Institute of Psycholinguistics. In addition, it has been analyzed which parts of the brain are activated in this process.

Neurologists often do not have the possibility of carrying out such studies, even in animal models they cannot analyze them, since they do not speak. In fact, three patients affected by epilepsy had the opportunity to measure brain activity when they were preparing for the intervention, introducing electrodes into the brain, in the Broca area, related to speech, among others.

Well, to take advantage of this unique opportunity, they asked the patients to think a word, to change the tense of verb if it was a verb and to become plural or singular and to say it in silence. These three actions are an example of the three main components of the language: word, grammar and phonology.

Image courtesy of: Ned T. Sahin