Poizner H. What the Hands Reveal About the Brain 1993

Textbook in PDF format

Considering how difficult it must be to study how the different areas of the human brain are used to process language and more specifically sign language I think the authors did an admirable job. I would have preferred a full-page drawing of the human brain showing by location which aspect of sign language seemed to specialize for which area. Since this was the goal of the research it would have made it clearer to follow the author's conclusions. I came away with a renewed sense of wonder for the marvelous resilliancy and redundancy of the human brain that even after something so devestating as a stroke for some people other areas of the brain eventually adapted and retrained itself to take over jobs that it would not normally do. If you want to learn sign language and exactly how it works this is not the book for you. This book excells in a rather narrow, but fascinating field.
Preface and Acknowledgments.
Introduction
Preliminaries: Language in a Visual Modality
The Neural Substrate for Language
Signers with Strokes: Left-Hemisphere Lesions
Language across Left-Lesioned Signers
Signers with Strokes: Right-Hemisphere Lesions
Apraxia and Sign Aphasia
Visuospatial Nonlanguage Capacity
Spatialized Syntax, Spatial Mapping, and Modality
Appendix
References
Index