Some web pages for our discussion of the brain, cognition, and the composing process: 

Names for Regions of the Brain: a visual key to the terms used to describe your noggin.

The Writer's Brain: a list of brain areas and distribution of functions, useful for learning vocabulary for other articles.

The Motor Cortex Humunculus: Wilder Penfield, a pioneering early twentieth-century neurosurgeon, used a low voltage electrical stimulus administered to conscious but sedated patients during brain surgery to map the motor cortex.  For the first time, we were able to see how much of this valuable brain real estate is devote to operating crucial parts of the body for making speech.  When combined with the sensory cortex located in the opposite hemisphere of the brain, this gives us a map of the mechanisms for sending and for receiving language.

Winchester Malory Manuscript reader annotations, adult dyslexic alphabet practice leaf 189r, 90r (three times), and 254 v.  C17 teen or young adult MS practice writing in Wither's Abuses Stript and Whipt (1617).

Margery Kempe Remembers "Seeing" Her Name Written in a Dream (ca. 1435-50)

Ed Yong, "Revisiting FOXP2 and the origins of language" Not Exactly Rocket Science: Science for Everyone (blog), 11/11/2009. (this is the "lite" version)

Philip Lieberman, "FOXP2 gene, human cognition and language,"  International Congress Series, Volume 1296, June 2006, Pages 115-126.  Integrative Approaches to Human Health and Evolution. Proceedings of the International Symposium “Integrative Approaches to Human Health and Evolution” held in Madrid, Spain, between 18 and 20 April 2005 (this is a scholarly version)

Renaissance memory theaters, Thomas Murner's Logica Memorativa playing cards, modern artificial long-term memory constructs to support scientific writing

Solving Syllabus Problems: Teaching Research as a Part of Scholarly Life vs. Teaching "the Research Paper":  a short paper about the why the "research paper" is a phony event and the "master-apprentice" model of education.

The Capital Community College Power-Point-Based Sentence Diagramming Demonstration.  re: movement and other modes of physical manipulation to teach writing--note, the "machine-gun" sound effect is supposed to be an IBM Selectric typewriter pounding out the words.