Unificazione, rappresentazione e linguaggio: l'area di Broca nei processi cognitivi complessi

Abstract

Human language is a cognitive technology, a biological constraint that structures the entire cognition. The syntactic-semantic processes work under unification principles in which linguistic and pragmatic information, coming from world’s knowledge, are treated in parallel. To understand a language means a kind of know-how, to acquire a specific competence within a social contest. According to recent studies, Broca’s area functions as the morphological interrelation of multimodal unification and involves operations of unification (merge) that concern world’s knowledge, semantic information and speaker’s feature. The data show that Broca’s area, previously conceived as syntax’s module, is indeed a processor of complex cognitive competence. Broca’s area does not deal only to linguistic operation, but represents the reality, unifying linguistic (syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) and non linguistic components. Broca’s area regulates cognitive control, selecting the exact representation for the execution of specific tasks. The cognitive control regulates attention and action for specific goals. How is it possible that a linguistic area governs a central function of cognition? We propose that the multiple-functionality of Broca’s area is connected with its evolutionary story: this part of the neocortex is involved in different functional networks, structures strongly related to each other, that during evolution were subjected to exaptation. The central computational components of human language originally concerned non linguistic functions, like hierarchic and motor planning, non verbal thinking and spatial reasoning. Broca’s area blends pre-existent conceptual units (action, vocalization and visual representation) to create a discrete continuity of amodals cognitive structures