It is very complicated to figure out the details of how the information from different parts of the brain might combine in real time, so another kind of advance has come from the development of ways to use computers to simulate parts of what the brain might be doing during speaking or reading.
Investigations of exactly what people with aphasia and other language disorders can and cannot do also continue to contribute to our understanding of the relationships between brain and language. For example, comparing how people with aphasia perform on tests of syntax, combined with detailed imaging of their brains, has shown that there are important individual differences in the parts of the brain involved in using grammar. Also, comparing people with aphasia across languages shows that the various types of aphasia have somewhat different symptoms in different languages, depending on the kinds of opportunities for error that each language provides. For example, in languages that have different forms for masculine and feminine pronouns or masculine and feminine adjectives, people with aphasia may make gender errors in speaking, but in languages that don’t have different forms for different genders, that particular problem can’t show up.