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How the brain works
A sensible theory of language places it within our best understanding of neural processes in the brain. In the 1940s, psychologist Donald Hebb observed that neuronal connections in the brain do not seem to work one at a time (the way we might design a computer program) but in great masses like soccer fans swarming onto the pitch after a game.
Hebb knew that neurons excite each other by means of connections (synapses), and he declared that using a synapse strengthens it. Large masses of neurons working together came to be known as Hebbian cell assemblies, and the rule that using a synapse strengthens it (Hebb's rule) is regarded as the basic process of change and thus of learning.
People used to think that different parts of the brain handled different functions neatly, similar to the way we might divide up the work in a factory. Now, however, the best thinking is that function is related to location only in a general sense. Instead, the brain does networking, in which neurons in many different areas participate in complex processing. What used to be thought of as centers of processing are now described as epicenters of distributed processing.
M. Marcel Mesulam, professor of neurology at the medical school of Northwestern University, described the networks as "partially overlapping large-scale networks organized around reciprocally interconnected cortical epicenters." He said at least five large-scale networks can be identified in the brain, one of them being a language network.
The metaphor of resonance is a handy way of describing mental processing. The implication is that many parts of the brain are activated in concert with whatever thoughts, feelings or environmental stimuli are being processed.
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How the brain 'does' language It used to be thought that two areas of the brain perform language: Broca's area was the storehouse of speech patterns and Wernicke's area contained a sound-word dictionary.
According to Mesulam, however, these two areas do not act alone but are epicenters in a distributed language network. Wernicke's area, for example, is a portion of the brain that acts as a gateway between sound and meaning. It is necessary but not sufficient for processing words. =====(Abbr.)