Cited by 42Neurobiology of Language and BilingualismReading and Literacy DevelopmentLanguage Development and Disorders

Striatum and language processing: Where do we stand?

Open access
Jacquemot, Charlotte, Bachoud-Lévi, Anne-Catherine·2021·Cognition

Abstract

More than a century ago, Broca (1861), Wernicke (1874) and Lichteim (1885) laid the foundations for the first anatomo-functional model of language, secondarily enriched by Geschwind (1967), leading to the Broca-Wernicke-Lichteim-Geschwind model. This model included the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices as well as a subcortical structure, which could be the striatum, whose nature and role have remained unclear. Although the emergence of language deficits in patients with striatal injury has challenged the cortical language models developed over the past 30 years, the integration of the striatum into language processing models remains rare. The main argument for not including the striatum in language processing is that the disorders observed in patients with striatal dysfunction may result from the striatal role in cognitive functions beyond language, and not from the impairment of language itself. Indeed, unraveling the role of the striatum and the frontal cortex, linked by the fronto-striatal pathway, is a challenge. Here, we first reviewed the studies that explored the link between striatal functions and the different levels of language (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexico-semantics). We then looked at the language models, which included the striatum, and found that none of them captured the diversity of experimental data in this area. Finally, we propose an integrative anatomo-functional model of language processing combining traditional language processing levels and some "executive" functions, known to improve the efficiency and fluidity of language: control, working memory, and attention. We argue that within this integrative model, the striatum is a central node of a verbal executive network that regulates, monitors, and controls the allocations of limited cognitive resources (verbal working memory and verbal attention), whatever the language level. This model combines data from neurology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104785

Cites

167 of 167 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

3 of the 170 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Jacquemot, C., & Bachoud-Lévi, A.-C.
Affiliations
Inserm (FR)
Venue
Cognition
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2021-08
Volume
213
Pages
104785
ISSN
0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3164581300
Cited by
42
References
170
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 1
FWCI
3.82
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Cognition (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
  • Fondation Maladies Rares
  • Ministerio de Sanidad, Consumo y Bienestar Social
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
Keywords
striatum, language processing, language deficits, verbal working memory, cognitive control, levels of language
MeSH terms
Corpus Striatum, Humans, Huntington Disease, Language, Phonetics, Semantics

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review