Her left frontal language areas showed atrophy.
Different parts of the brain lit up, but they were outside the usual language areas.
In no two language areas, however, are the formal characteristics of the ballad identical.
Why one side of the brain should consistently have a bigger share of language areas is still open, she said.
Or, if the language areas of a brain are destroyed by a stroke, a replacement part could simply be ordered.
This renders the language areas effectively blind, so that they cannot interpret visible language such as the written word.
Some left-handed people are right-brained for language, she said, in some cases because of injury, causing a switch to spare language areas on the right.
Two areas that are consistently active when jazz musicians or freestyle rappers are improvising are the premotor areas and language areas.
In 2006, members of the Duke team published a study suggesting that with careful imaging they could map language areas before opening the skull.
The fact that individuals with brain damage to key language areas can nevertheless swear, indicates that compared with regular language, swearing is a special case.
All healthy and epileptic subjects activated language areas with both fMRI tasks.
