How Frank Guenther turns thoughts
into words
(November 2, 2011) For thousands of years humans have spoken.
Noam Chomsky and many other linguists argue that speech is what sets Homo
sapiens apart in the animal kingdom. “Speech,” wrote Aristotle, “is the
representation of the mind.”
It is a complex process, the
series of lightning-quick steps by which your thoughts form themselves into
words and travel from your brain, via the tongue, lips, vocal folds, and jaw
(together known as the articulators), to your listeners’ ears—and into their
own brains.
Complex, but mappable. Over the
course of two decades and countless experiments using functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) and other methods of data collection, neuroscientist
Frank Guenther has built a computer model describing just how your brain pulls
off the trick of speaking.
And the information isn’t merely
fascinating. Guenther (GRS’93), a Sargent College professor of speech, language
and hearing sciences, believes his model will help patients suffering from
apraxia (where the desire to speak is intact, but speech production is
damaged), stuttering, Lou Gehrig’s disease, throat cancer, even paralysis.