Current Perspectives on Imaging Language

Abstract

Functional neuroimaging has been highly successful in mapping anatom- ical regions involved in language processing although these regions rarely, if ever, correspond to cognitively defined a priori expectations. For instance, traditional notions of orthography and phonology have no simple neuroanatomic correlates and instead may emerge from dynamic interactions across multiple brain regions. Thus, a challenge for neurolinguists is to move beyond simply mapping cognitive functions onto neuroanatomy and towards a systematic understanding of the neural information processing underlying language. Here, I illustrate this process in the domain of skilled reading and attempt to highlight a set of imaging tools which facilitate the process. The results demonstrate how cognitive theories and neurobi- ological investigations can be mutually informative and lead to novel explanations framed in terms of neural information processing.