SHORT PAPER #3:

Question: (2-4 pages).

Recent anatomical and physiological mapping experiments in the cortex of non-human primates and other mammals have suggested modification of a very old view of brain function that we described in class as the "Cell Doctrine". The modern version of that idea is that sense organs project to modality-specific cortical areas, but that these modality-specific areas then eventually all project to a central polymodal or amodal "association cortex" that is the true site of higher level functions.

First, describe the traditional view of a central amodal cortex for higher level functions and then summarize data that has suggested changes in the traditional view. Second, how might these newer data be relevant to understanding the human brain, and particularly the peculiar linguistic abilities of humans?

Be sure to mention at least one piece of evidence from each of all three of the following kinds of studies: neurobiological (visual, somatosensory, auditory, motor areas in animals and humans), neuropsychological (studies of function after brain damage) and the behavioral/linguistic (psychology experiments on humans).