Anne-Lise Giraud is a doctor of neurosciences, specializing in language and its pathologies. She is Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, and tenured professor at the University of Geneva, where she directs a laboratory for research on the brain, hearing, and language.
What is the origin of speech in our brain? What is its place in our consciousness? Through which neurobiological mechanisms can someone be deprived of it? Why is someone unable to speak after suffering a stroke? What is “stuck” when someone stutters? What is the relationship between dyslexia and listening to speech? What happens to words in a brain when someone becomes deaf? Why does an autistic child not respond when someone speaks to him? Why do schizophrenics hear voices?
Anne-Lise Giraud brings together the ideas and the neuroscientific data that has emerged in the last few years on disorders affecting speech. She brings the reader up to date on this faculty of language that distinguishes us from other animal species, and responds with documented detail to the specific questions asked by people afflicted closely or remotely by these types of language disorders: What’s wrong with me? How can I be treated? Will I be cured?