[Comparing perception and expression of tense morpheme of verb in Persian language children and bilingual with specific language impairment]

The goal of this study was to search verb morphology in bilingual with specific language impairment and comparing them with normal bilingual and Persian children with special language disorder because we want to find their ability in this skills in bilingual children with specific language impairment and evaluating Low Capacity Processing [LCP] theory. Six bilingual [Azeri- Persian] children with specific language impairment and 6 Persian were selected from clinics of Tehran. They were 7-8 years old. Children with specific language impairment were evaluated about Perception and Expression tense morpheme of verbs and then they were compared with 6 age-matched children as control groups. Children with specific language impairment are diagnosed as exhibiting a significant delay [more than one year] in language that can not be explained by intelligence deficits, hearing loss or visual impairment. In this research we used narrative speech and specific language impairmentest and we used Man Whitneyest for comparing these groups. Bilingual children with specific language impairment [SLI] have delay in comparison with their age- matched group in tense morphemes [p=0.020, p=0.019]. They also have delay in tense of verbs [past, present, future] in comparison with Persian language children with special language impairment but it was not meaningful [p= 0.057]. Comparison between typical development of bilingual children and bilinguals with SLI shows that verb morphology is a good clinical marker for diagnosing and treatment of these children. Comparison between Persian language children with SLI and bilinguals with SLI shows that there is no evidence for LCP theory

Functional imaging of Broca's area in native Persian speakers: an fMRI study

The problem of localization of speech associated cortices using noninvasive methods has been of utmost importance in many neuroimaging studies, but the results are difficult to resolve for specific neurosurgical applications. In this study, we used fMRI to delineate language-related brain activation patterns with emphasis on the Broca's area during the execution of two Persian language tasks. The subjects comprised of nine healthy right-handed men who participated voluntarily in this study. They performed two consequent fMRI paradigms namely; "Word Production" and "Reverse Word Reading". The fMRI data were collected and analyzed. Then, functional images were registered to anatomical images using FSL software. The laterality indices were also calculated in regions of interest with different threshold levels. The results indicate that Broca's area, as the classical language-production center, was robustly activated while performing these two tasks. In eight out of nine subjects, the left hemisphere dominancy and Broca's area activation were observed and in one case activation was prominent in the homologous area in the right hemisphere. Similar pattern of cortical activation during Persian word production and Anglophone languages such as English was revealed. fMRI is a valuable means for brain mapping in language studies