Sign Language and the Brain

One over-arching finding that emerges from our studies of both neurologically intact and brain-injured signers is that the left cerebral hemisphere is critical for sign language processes, as it is for spoken language. Several structures within the left hemisphere that have been shown to be involved in spoken language comprehension and production are also recruited for sign language. These results demonstrate the extent and limits of neural plasticity in the developing brain. Further, they show that left hemisphere specialization for language does not arise from the particular demands of auditory speech perception. Our current studies focus on uncovering what neural regions are engaged in processing constructions, linguistic facial expressions, and the use of space within discourse