Broca's area

He was no longer able to speak.

The stroke damaged a specific area in the left hemisphere of his brain called Broca's area, and left him with what's known as Broca's aphasia.

Broca's area is partly responsible for the ability to produce and process language, and Broca's aphasia often leaves its sufferers with some ability to understand speech, but an inability to produce intelligible words.

James could understand his wife when she asked if he wanted cereal for breakfast, but he could only respond by repeating the word, too.

Although he could still intonate, as though he were speaking a whole sentence.

Then, after some time in therapy, something rather unexpected happened.

James regained some ability to communicate through singing.

Broca's aphasia can sometimes be treated by teaching patients to sing, because singing uses a different region of the brain, one that's on the right side and that's analogous to Broca's area on the left.

Welcome back, everybody.

We had a mistake yesterday, some kind of issue with the platform, but today we're going to be talking about Broca versus Wernicke, which was the title.

So let's get into knowing those distinctions, which will be helpful for the EPPP.

Broca is primarily associated with language production, typically located in the left frontal lobe, particularly in the inferior frontal region of the language-dominant hemisphere.

So when you think of Broca, think of Broca equals broken speech.

A person with Broca's aphasia generally understands much of what other people are saying, but has difficulty producing fluent speech.

So they understand it, but can't produce fluent speech.

Their speech may be slow, effortful, and abbreviated.

But a great change was impending.

On April 14, 1861, an eminent French hospital surgeon, Paul Broca, read a paper before the Société d'Anthropologie of Paris, in which he adduced evidences to prove that there is a definite locality in the brain which is the sole seat of articulate speech, found in a limited area in the lower and posterior part of the convolution called the third frontal, and which is now named Broca's convolution.

This fact, of course, could only be demonstrated by injuries to that part in the human subject, and Broca showed, by citing a number of post-mortem examinations of persons dying after paralysis of the right side of the body, usually due to apoplexy, and who with the onset of the paralysis lost the power of utterance, that in all such cases damage to that locality was demonstrable.

As this statement seemed at first to be a reversion to the tenets of phrenology, it gave rise to so much heated discussion and denial that it was not until about 1865 that it began to be generally admitted.

What chiefly led to its final acceptance was the further discovery that the two other elements of human speech besides articulate utterance also have each their distinct and separate brain localities, one place being found for the words we receive through the ear, damage to which place causes word deafness, even though there be no deafness to other sounds than words, and, secondly, one place for words received through the eye in reading.

The demonstration of these anatomical bases of the faculty of speech soon led to careful experimental investigation of the brain in animals for other seats of distinct functions, constituting what is now termed cerebral localization, and to a comparison of the results achieved with the effects of injury or of disease in the brain of men.

By 1870, through the labors of both experimental physiologists and practicing physicians, such as Hitzig, Ferrier, Munk, Luciani, Charcot, and others, it was shown that each of the special senses has its anatomical seat in the brain, and, in addition to that, in a centrally placed zone are to be found the seats governing the voluntary movements of the muscles of the body, so that each muscle, or group of muscles, can be made to contract by excitation of the corresponding locality in the cortex or surface of the brain.

These discoveries were great enough of themselves, but they are relatively of secondary importance compared with those which followed and which will cause the name of Broca, as yet scarcely known by the general public, to rank in the history of science along with the names of Copernicus and of Isaac Newton.

So let's do a little shift from fluent aphasia to non-fluent aphasia.

Non-fluent aphasia, one of the primary ones, the name you'll hear, is called Broca's aphasia.

So non-fluent aphasia is right at the backside of the frontal lobe.

This is the frontal lobe.

You have the right side of your frontal lobe.

So call this the frontal lobe right here, okay? This kinda chunk.

It's at the backside, and often you will hear the term Broca's aphasia.

So let's talk about how Broca's aphasia presents.

And there's two kind of special areas that we need to talk about when it comes to the temporal lobe.

One is the Wernicke's area and the other is the Broca's area.

The Broca's area is coordinated right here and you will see its relationship with the frontal lobe and Wernicke's area is right here, dealing with how our experience is combined and how we're hearing things.

Okay.

So Broca's area, a person is really, when there's damage to this area, they're able to hear information correctly.

No, no, correct that wrong.

They're unable to hear information correctly, but they can give a logical yet unrelated response.

Okay, so let's start with the first point, and that's this: language is not stored in a single language center.

Although Broca and Wernicke's areas were once thought to be the sole language hubs, so these are different parts of the brain, Broca's and Wernicke's areas, they're named, uh, those parts of the brain are named that.

So although these areas were once thought to be the sole language hubs, sole meaning only, like only one.

Language hubs, a hub is, I guess, a place where lots of information all is exchanged.

We need to try and mix it up a bit more.

In the article now, we have a table which shows different brain regions and the functions of those brain regions.

For example, Broca's area, the function there is that it produces speech, grammar processing, and syntactic structuring.

That's like the, the word order in sentences.

Excellent.

How about a patient who suffered a stroke or has a left hemisphere tumor and is presenting with Broca's aphasia?

This requires deep empathy.

Broca's area, located in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere, is the motor speech center.

It controls the physical ability to form words.

Broca's aphasia is an expressive aphasia.

The patient can fully understand everything you are saying to them.

Their intellect is completely intact.