me: Mar 12, 99

Hello,

If you are not the person I have seen mentioned as having brought to light
the case of Chelsea, delete this, forgive me, and please excuse the
intrusion.

If you are that person, I wonder if you can tell me if any research more
recent than that mentioned in Steven Pinker's book, The Language Instinct, is available. I am revising a chapter in a linguistics text and I am not too comfortable with using a deaf adult's lack of grammar in spoken English as support for a "critical period" of language acquisition (even if it's true). I wonder if she has ever tried to learn American Sign Langauge, for example.
 _____________________________
Glusker:

I am the person doing the Chelsea project, and the project actually is
continuing. Probably the best person to give you linguistic update is
Suzie Curtis. We go down to visit her every few years now, for repeated
follow-up testing.

Chelsea has been involved with ASL for the last five years or so, but her
'grammatical' problems are similar in it as they are in English. I think that the 'critical period hypothesis' is in reality too unitary. What is fact seems to happen is something like this. Formal grammar is not impossible, but is impaired. But vocabulary grows, and somehow also the ability to use it as well. It is as though there is some aspect of pragmatic use, albeit ungrammatical, which increases, and faciliates her communication with other. Also, rather curiously, in some of our work with her, she overlearns some grammatically constructed units, like phrases, and
then begins to use those phrases as whole units, sometimes. It is a complicated business. But the bottom line here is that 'grammar' for the critical period, is not a unitary phenomenon. We are seeing how Chelsea can do some things with it, and not others. And, it is not a static process. There is more plasticity than one would think.... which, as I neurologist, I find quite logical, given what we are learning about neuronal plasticity these days.
_________________________________
me: Mar 14

Hello, Dr. Glusker.

In your kind reply to my recent query about Chelsea, you said, "...There is
more plasticity than one would think.... which, as I neurologist, I find
quite logical, given what we are learning about neuronal plasticity
these days."

Indeed. I came across this abstract the other day. I remember reading about
the case in a popular magazine and then I simply forgot about it. You
probably know of it, but if not, it is interesting.
 

"Onset of speech after left hemispherectomy in a nine-year-old boy.
Vargha-Khadem F, Carr LJ, Isaacs E, Brett E, Adams C, Mishkin M
Brain 1997 Jan 120 ( Pt 1) 159-82

Abstract
Case Alex, with Sturge-Weber Syndrome affecting the left hemisphere, failed
to develop speech throughout early boyhood, and his comprehension of single words and simple commands remained stagnant at an age equivalent of 3-4 years. But then, following left hemidecortication at age 8.5 years and withdrawal of
anticonvulsants when he was more than 9 years old, Alex suddenly began to
acquire speech and language. He also showed an unusual degree of residual motor capacity on his right side. Alex's remarkable progress in learning speech and language, and the development of his other cognitive abilities, were measured
periodically from the age of 9 to 15 years. His most recent scores on tests
of receptive and expressive language place him at an age equivalent of 8-10 years. Comparison with the level of function attained in these domains by nine other left hemispherectomized patients with early onset of disease and comparable
IQ (range, 40-68) but with early development of speech and language,
suggests that, surprisingly, Alex has suffered no permanent disadvantage from his protracted period of mutism and severely limited comprehension. Although the findings in Alex, as in other left-hemispherectomized patients, indicate define
limits to the cognitive and linguistic capacity of the isolated right hemisphere, Alex's achievements appear to challenge the widely held view that early childhood is a particularly critical period for acquisition of speech and language or any of their selective aspects, including phonology, grammar, prosody and semantics. It is
concluded that clearly articulated, well structured, and appropriate language can be acquired for the first time as late as age 9 years with the right hemisphere alone.

__________________________________
Glusker: Mar 15
 

I believe I heard about this. There are numerous examples in
rehabilitation patients after strokes and trauma. There is also work in
songbirds about regeneration of neurons. There is the new discovery of
progenitor cells in the hippocampus and periventricular areas, even though
we don't yet understand how they work.... but the potential for new
neuronal growth is there. And so on....

The case you mentions begs the questions a little, since my understanding
has been that the critical age limit is somewhere in adolescence.

Have you read any of Nelen Neville's work on this. She strongly supports
the critical age hypothesis. She has also been involved in the Chelsea
project, and interprets our data a little differently - something like the
glass half empty versus half full!

 ___________________________________
Me: Mar 18

Hello, again, and thank you for the message. I am not familiar with the
person you mention below. Can you give me a few references?
 

>Have you read any of Helen Neville's work on this. She strongly supports
>the critical age hypothesis. She has also been involved in the Chelsea
>project, and interprets our data a little differently - something like the
>glass half empty versus half full!
 

Also, something new to me --but probably not to you!-- is yet another
medical acronym to learn. I came across this in an article in New Scientist.
The was entitled, "Cutting out stuttering," and had the lead, " Brain
surgery was once kept for devastating disorders. Now it may become a
treatment for a speech defect." Then, this passage: "TMS, or trans- cranial
magnetic stimulation, is a newer technology that uses magnetic pulses to
temporarily disable parts of the brain. So while PET scans can tell you
which brain regions are activated, TMS can test theories about whether
switching off one of those regions will make the condition disappear."
_________________________

Glusker, Mar 20

Helen Neville is a very very highly regarded researcher in the area. I am
surprised you have not heard of her. She was at the Salk Insitute for many
years, and is now at the University of Oregon. I went on the net to
Internet Grateful Med at the national library of medicine and did a search
on neville, helen. Here are the first 20 of 64 references. You can get
more the same way. I have attached the file.

__________________________

me: Mar 25

Hello, again.

>Helen Neville is a very very highly regarded researcher in the area. I am
>surprised you have not heard of her. >>

Thank you very much for the references. There are lots of people in the
field that I don't know. I am little more than an enthusiasic amateur
researcher.

I came across a review of Gazziniga's The Cognitive Neurosciences by Rick
Grush that contains this paragraph:

"...Another more serious potential problem is that little editorial effort
was put into guaranteeing unbiased, or at least balanced, contributions within the
sections (each section was edited by a knowledgeable researcher in the
field in question). For example, all seven contributions in the section on
language, edited by Steven Pinker, seem devoted to defending Pinker's own
not uncontroversial view of language implementation. The heavy bias is
both obvious and inexcusable. There is serious debate as to the nature of
linguistic knowledge, and its neural implementation. At least three major
theoretical approaches are roughly discernible in the field: Chomskyan
linguistics (Pinker's pet), connectionism, and cognitive linguistics. Only
the first, however, is given any airtime at all. The second receives only a few
scattered mentions (as the 'obviously wrong-headed' associationist
alternative), and the third ignored entirely..."

I wonder where your own views on plasticity would fit in those three
categories. From what I have read in the last few days by Neville, her views
seems to be more similar to yours than you expressed when you said,
"She strongly supports the critical age hypothesis... and interprets our
data a little differently - something like the glass half empty versus half
full!"

I also found some recent stuff by Vargha-Khada on the "KE" family in England
and chromosome 7. I am anxious to explain to undergrad linguistics students
that this does not mean that a "language gene" has been discovered!
(Although, if I were Chomsky or Pinker, I might like to believe that.)
_____________________

Glusker: Mar 26

Thanks for your interesting note. You have me at a disadvantage, because I
am not routinely reading the current, relevant neurosciences literature. I
am too enmeshed in clinical practice, and in keeping up with various
clinical journals. Hence.... I am not sure what the reviewer means,
exactly, by the terms: 'connectionism' and 'cognitive linguistics'. They
obviously define some theoretical position, but since I am not familiar with
the terms, it is hard to comment.

Helen and I chat from time to time, and she is roughly current with what we
are doing. I know her views have changed somewhat over time, and with the
work that she has done as well - especially with some of the new functional
MRI studies being done. But I have not talked with her about specific
theoretical positions recently - nor read her recent work. (We go back
twenty years or so.) So..... I am not too surprised that you find her more
towards my side of things, so to speak. It means to me that she has been
watching more of the evolution of stuff, and shifted her views somewhat from
the initial training she got..... which is all to the good. I will have to
chat with her more now.

Although I cannot comment on the terms the reviewer uses, I might add that
current work with neural stem cells (in both animals and starting now with
humans) is raising all kinds of questions about what kinds of functions are
'fixed', and what functions continuously remodel, or what aspects of what
functions can remodel and what cannot. Questions are now being raised about
neurons continuously replacing themselves when damaged, in some way -
certainly in some animals, and quite possibly in humans, in some settings.
But that then raises the question of how does one explain the apparent
'barrier' to some kind of linguistic functioning at particular ages..... or,
in another venue, how does one neurally explain the phenomenon of
'imprinting' in other animals (and.... is such a phenomenon unique to those
animals or is there some facet of that that applies to humans as well).
Obviously we do not know the answers - these are the edges of what is being
looked at.

I see, personally, and read information in neurology journals about,
patients who sometimes recover essentially normal function from having been
in a coma for prolonged periods (e.g. a month) with demonstrable lesions on
imaging studies, but who recover slowly enough to resume normal lives,
living and functioning independently. One such patient is a national award
winning poet! and artist. But not all patients do well, obviously. We have
yet to learn what lesions, where, due to what kinds of trauma, with what
kinds of physiologic insults, are amenable to repair, and which ones aren't,
and why. We are also learning which parts of the brain can remodel and take
over function for others, and which ones cannot. There seems to be a fair
amount of flux in the system, even across sensory modalities, but there
clearly are limits to this too. There are also time limits.... we know that
certain repairs occur in children, naturally, that do not seem to occur in
adults - i.e. the younger the brain, the more the plasticity.

My hunch is that language function STARTS very very early, days to weeks old
(or even earlier), and that it requires close coordination between different
modalities in order to work. If one or another of these, but MOST critically auditory functioning, is impaired, then the development of alternate pathways may not occur, especially if there is not adequate recognition of the absence of the stimulus input that drives the system to begin with.

You may have heard about a very controversial area that usually arouses a
lot of discussion and argument in the deaf world, namely whether it is
possible to teach deaf people to hear and talk normally. The deaf world has
become so politicized that it is hard to get real science in edgewise. But,
years ago, I met and talked on a number of occasions with a remarkable
teacher named Leah Grammatico. She was well known to a wide number of
people, private and academic, and had a little school of her own, which I
visited on a few occasions, including with Chelsea. Leah showed me, and
others, that if you use additional sensory inputs (she most often used
vibratory forms of devices applied to the head), deaf people could learn to
'hear' and to speak, using an alternate sensory system. She was working
with school children, of varying ages, but achieved some very stunning
results (some of which I personally saw).... that sometimes baffled people,
and always made us look and think much more carefully. This means that
certain kinds of things are sometimes possible....so one wonders how, and
why, and so on.

Hope my meandering here may be more helpful than confusing, or irritating!

__________________________

me:

Hello, again.

You said:
"I am not sure what the reviewer means,exactly, by the terms:
'connectionism' and 'cognitive linguistics'. They obviously define some theoretical position, but since I am not familiar with the terms, it is hard to comment."
 

I'm not too sure either, and that is one of the things that has always
bothered me about linguistics; i.e. How is that they manage to take
something as fascinating as language and turn it into cement?!

My understanding of the first of that reviewer's "at least three" models --that is, the Chomsky/Pinker description he objected to-- is that it is a "language organ" model. They presume there to be a separate "grammar module" in language that is apart from vocabulary and pragmatics and that can break down separately. Such
breakdowns --at least some of them-- might now be tractable by studies in
genetics --genes which specify at least some grammar circuitry. They
apparently feel that grammar --and thus the physical circuitry underlying
grammar-- is specific. It does grammar and nothing else. Grammar is not just
another cubicle in the great Ministry of Temporal Processing and Motor
Planning. Syntax has nothing to do with the fact that we learned to walk by putting one foot in front of the other and then made the discovery that putting subjects in front of verbs seemed to be a pretty good idea, too.

[Glusker]:
I SUSPECT THAT THERE IS SOME TRUTH TO THIS, JUDGING BY TWO THINGS. ONE, CHELSEA'S GRAMMAR HAS REMAINED VERY SIGNIFICANTLY 'IMPAIRED' DESPITE ALL THESE YEARS, AND DESPITE INCREASED PRAGMATICS AND LEXICON. IF YOU HAVE A FAX NUMBER, I CAN FAX YOU AN EXAMPLE OF A LETTER OR SHORT COMPOSITION OF HERS, WHICH WILL EXEMPLIFY THIS. THE SECOND THING IS THIS. HAD DINNER LAST NIGHT WITH A NEUROSURGEON WHO WAS VISITING AND GAVE A LECTURE AT MY HOSPITAL. HE DOES EPILESPY SURGERY, AND TRAINED WITH GEORGE OJEMAN, IN SEATTLE, WHO HAS DONE A LOT OF WORK ON LANGUAGE. MY FRIEND'S COMMENTS REFLECT SOME OF OJEMAN'S THINKING, AND RELATED TO THE FACT THAT HE FEELS THERE ARE DIFFERENT REGIONS THAT ARE LANGUAGE SPECIFIC. THAT IS, IF SOMEONE SPEAKS ENGLISH AND ALSO SPANISH OR SOMETHING ELSE, THEN THE REGIONS OF THE BRAIN THAT SUBSERVE THOSE LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS ARE IN DIFFERENT
PLACES. THAT IS INTERESTING TO ME, BUT BEGS THE QUESTION SOMEWHAT ALSO, SINCE WHATEVER IS LANGUAGE SPECIFIC MUST ALSO USE OTHER COMMON PATHWAYS FOR SPEECH, ETC. I HAVE NOT READ ENOUGH OF OJEMAN'S WRITINGS TO BE ABLE TO CARRY THIS FURTHER.

[Me]:
The "language organ" item of the moment seems to be chromosome 7, part of
which has already been dubbed SPCH1 by some researchers. Dennis Drayna of
the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders said
last year that "It's exciting to think we're going to start studying
something as incredibly sophisticated as language gene by gene." That was
in reference to research done on the KE family in Britain, a large extended family which shares language impairment. I think I'll write Drayna and see how optimistic he is a year later.

I had a look at the impressive website of the Human Genome Project this
morning, and found:

"Bethesda, MD-Scientists at the National Human Genome Research Institute
(NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), using the recently
completed physical map of human chromosome 7, have identified an altered
gene thought to cause as many as ten percent of hereditary deafness cases...
The normal gene makes a protein the researchers have named pendrin....When
altered, the gene produce defective pendrin and causes Pendred syndrome, a
disorder that typically produces deafness at birth due to an improper
development of the inner ear."

[Glusker]
FOR THE RECORD, CHELSEA WAS BORN DEAF, BUT WE BELIEVE THAT IT WAS DUE TO AN INFECTION THAT OCCURRED ABOUT THREE WEEKS BEFORE BIRTH, PROBABLY DUE TO CMV (CYTOMEGALOVIRUS) WHICH HAS A PREDILECTION FOR HEARING PATHWAYS. IT CAN ALSO CAUSE OTHER DAMAGE, AND IT APPEARS IN CHELSEA THAT SHE IS ALSO, TO SOME DEGREE, LEARNING DISABLED. THAT IS, WORKING WITH HER AND TEACHING HER HAS SOME OF THE SAME CHARACTERISTICS OF WORKING WITH OTHER LEARNING DISABLED STUDENTS. (MY PRIOR JOB, BEFORE GOING INTO MEDICINE, WAS AS A TEACHER OF LEARNING IMPAIRED INDIVIDUALS.)
 

[Me]:
The idea of starting to pick apart at least some of the broad range of
communication disorders must be exciting to someone, such as yourself, who
is slogging it out in the trenches and actually helping people. Ten years ago, it was science
fiction.

To curb my own overexuberance at all this, I have to remember that there is
a difference between understanding the genetic basis of some disorders and
trying to find "language genes" which, if they work the way they should,
might be responsible for individual grammatical tasks within a presumed
"grammar module" of language. The obvious problem is that there is more
grammar than there are genes! Any hope of matching one gene to one
grammatical task (changing active to passive sentences, for example) gets
kind of dicey, especially if you try to figure out how many things you are
actually doing when you make such a transformation. One? Three? Ten? Yet,
the idea is exciting. Something like having the world's largest jigsaw
puzzle --in which most of the pieces are distressingly similar-- and then
having a go at it.

The reviewer's use of "connectionism" has to do, I think, with that term
as it was coined by bigtime computer geeks and gurus such as Marvin Minsky
in the 1980s. I came aross this abstract the other day which, I think, sums
it up:

"Language development.
Bates E
Curr Opin Neurobiol 1992 Apr 2:2 180-5

Abstract
Recent research suggests that our ability to learn language is innate, but
not necessarily domain-specific. That is, language development appears to be
based on a relatively plastic mix of neural systems that also serve other
cognitive and perceptual functions. Evidence in support of this conclusion
includes neural network simulations of language learning, event-related
brain potential studies of normal language development, and studies of
language development in several clinical populations of subjects suffering
focal brain injury, specific language impairment, and contrasting forms of
mental retardation."

I guess the key phrases are
(1) "...not necessarily domain-specific...,"
(2) "...systems that also serve other cognititve and perceptual
functions...,"
and
(3)"... neural network simulations of language learning...".

I see on my bookshelf an intimidating tome about neural networks that I
never got around to reading. It is from 1988. The way things are going, it
might as well be 1888. I guess the point is that if you make enough connections, sooner or later, we --or a computer-- will start doing things, one of which is language. I imagine there is something to the "..plastic mix of neural systems...",
otherwise, how could you ever recover from trauma at all? On the other hand,
I think some of these people grew up with 2001, A Space Odyssey, and
remember HAL, the computer with complete language skills. That is the last
thing in that movie that will come true, and it won't be the year after
next, either. The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Science has an entry
called "Computational Psycholinguistics", a title that would induce dyslexia
in John Stuart Mill. Maybe what that reviewer was talking about is in there
somewhere.

My understanding (again, I am giving myself the benefit of the doubt!) of
the "cognititive linguistics" term is that language is one of the things
which develops with developing intelligence and cognition, and that our
learning of language is very similar to our learning of anything else. It is
interesting to me how many "anything else's" have started to borrow
linguistics terms to descibe whatever it is they do. You read now of the
"grammar" of music, for example, or the "grammar" of a painting. I suppose
they feel that our ability to string notes or colors together is
"syntactical" and, thus, all learning is part of the same experience. Maybe
I'll write that reviewer a letter and ask him for a succint statement. He is
a linguist, so he may not "do" succint. (Nor do I, apparently, judging from
the length of this e-mail. It really started out to be short!)
 

[Glusker]:
I HAVE LONG THOUGHT, FOR YEARS, THAT THERE ARE SEPARATE 'GRAMMATICAL'
SYSTEMS FOR MOVEMENT, LIKE DANCE, AND FOR VISUAL PHENOMENA, LIKE ART. YOU COULD THINK OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE VISUAL SYSTEM, AS HUBEL AND WEISEL HAVE UNCOVERED IT, AS A KIND OF MECHANISTIC PICTURE OF THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPRESSION OF THE GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURES UNDERLYING VISION..... LINES, SHAPES, MOVEMENT, COLOR, AND SO ON. THOSE KINDS OF UNDERLYING PERCEPTUAL ABILITIES, IN THE RETINA, THEN THALAMUS, THEN OCCIPITAL CORTEX, THEN ASSOCIATION CORTICES, WITH EACH PLACE ADDING DIFFERENT ELEMENTS IN THE PROCESSING OF THE INFORMATION, COULD BE DESCRIBED AS A KIND OF 'GRAMMAR'. A SIMILAR KIND OF ARGUMENT CAN BE MADE FOR THE PERCEPTION AND GENERATION OF MOVEMENT OF THE JOINTS AND MUSCLES.
 
 

[Me]:

You said,
>Helen and I chat from time to time, and she is roughly current with what we
>are doing. I know her views have changed somewhat over time, and with the
>work that she has done as well - especially with some of the new functional
>MRI studies being done. >

I came across this the other day:

"Neural organization and plasticity of language [Review article]
Helen J Neville, Daphne Bavelier
Current Opinion in Neurobiology 1998, 8:254-258.

Abstract: Powerful advances in neuroimaging techniques have added to and
refined classical descriptions of the neurobiology of language in adults.
Recent studies have employed these methodologies to study the nature and
extent of plasticity of language-relevant aspects of cerebral organization
in adults, in early and late bilinguals and in people who have acquired
language through different modalities. Studies of children have documented
dynamic shifts in cerebral organization over the course of language
acquisition. Each of these different approaches has revealed constraints on
the identity of the neural systems that mediate language; these studies have
also described the marked and specific effects of language experience on the
organization of these systems."

I'm not too sure about the line "...constraints on the identity of the
neural systems that mediate language..". That is, I can't figure out if
"constraints on the identity" means that the neural systems are more
specific or less specific. Anyway, the part about "dynamic shifts in
cerebral organization over the course of language acquisition" is interesting. Plasticity, again, I suppose. Also, "acquiring language through different modalities" ties in with your story about Leah Grammatico. That was fascinating. Is there someone else I can bother to find out more? I know you have a day-job, so don't feel any sense of urgency about getting back to me.
 

[Glusker]:
I THINK SHE MEANS MORE SPECIFIC.... FOR EXAMPLE, EVEN THOUGH CHELSEA HAS ACQUIRED A VERY SIGNIFICANT LEXICON FROM WHERE SHE STARTED, SHE IS STILL VERY SIGNIFICANTLY CONSTRAINED IN HER ABILITY TO MANIPULATE THOSE UNITS - I.E. HER GRAMMAR. HER BRAIN HAS CHANGED ENORMOUSLY, BUT SOME ASPECTS HAVE REMAINED VERY CONSTRAINED.
 

 [me]:

Strange coincidence. I got out to Sorrento, walked into the room where I hold forth about music and saw a slide projector set up on a stand from a pervious presentation. The front end of the projector was propped up on a book for a better angle on the screen. The book? Under the Eye of the Clock, by Christopher Nolan, that severely language-impaired Irish kid who writes marvellous prose though he has never been able to utter a word in his life. Coincidence number two. I turned on the tv after I got home and Rainman was on, where Dustin Hoffman plays the guy with autism. Got me thinking abouthow overwhelming it is even to come up with a definition of communication disorders.
__________________________

[sample of "Chelsea's" written language. The handwriting all printed, neat, but 'childlike'. I have typed it exactly as it appears, excluding the erratic use of capitalization in places]

"Dear hi Peter

"My firend Raver with Linda to go the restuarans for lunch buy flowers yellows color orange I like want daffodils grow, daiseys white will to work outsida clean hot grass cut rak leaf tree redwood fall away trash my sister matha gave tulip grow water. My friend Jan and Rose gave flowers people I happy birthday excite my house people 10 many"