Passage 3 While the left hemisphere in the brain is innately predisposed to specialize for language, there is also evidence of
considerable plasticity in the right hemisphere during the early stages of language development. Under certain circumstances, the
right hemisphere can take over many of the language functions that would normally reside in the left hemisphere.
An impressive illustration is provided by children who have undergone a procedure known as hemispherectomy, in which
one hemisphere of the brain is surgically removed. This procedure is used to treat otherwise intractable cases of epilepsy. In
cases of left hemispherectomy after language acquisition has begun, the children experience an initial period of aphasia.
However, depending on the underlying disease that leads to the epilepsy, some children may reacquire a linguistic system
virtually indistinguishable from that of normal children. They also show many of the developmental patterns of normal language
acquisition. UCLA researchers who have studied many of these children hypothesize that the latent linguistic ability of the right
hemisphere is “freed” by the removal of the diseased left hemisphere, which may have had a strong inhibitory effect before the
surgery.
【題組】34. The word “freed” in the last sentence of this article means _____.
(A) released
(B) excluded
(C) limited
(D) controlled