AUTHOR=Corina David , Lawyer Laurie , Cates Deborah 

TITLE=Cross-Linguistic Differences in the Neural Representation of Human Language: Evidence from Users of Signed Languages

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2012

YEAR=2013

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00587

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00587

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Studies of deaf individuals who are users of signed languages have provided profound insight into the neural representation of human language.  Case studies of deaf signers who have incurred left- and right-hemisphere damage have shown that left-hemisphere resources are a necessary component of sign language processing.  These data suggest that, despite frank differences in the input and output modality of language,; core left perisylvian regions universally serve linguistic function.  Neuroimaging studies of deaf signers have generally provided support for this claim. However, more fine-tuned studies of linguistic processing in deaf signers are beginning to show evidence of important differences in the representation of signed and spoken languages.  In this paper, we provide a critical review of this literature and present compelling evidence for language-specific cortical representations in deaf signers.  These data lend support to the claim that the neural representation of language may show substantive cross-linguistic differences.  We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings with respect to an emerging understanding of the neurobiology of language.