Broca’s area

• Named after Paul Broca, French neurosurgeon
• Treated a patient called ‘Tan’ – unable to speak other than this one word (but did

  understand language)
• Studied 8 other patients who similar language deficits, along with lesions in their left frontal hemisphere
• Patients with damage to their right frontal hemisphere did not have the same problems
• This led him to identify the existence of a language centre in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere (Broca 1865)
• Believed to be critical for speech production
• Damage results in Broca’s aphasia - slow speech that is lacking in fluency.
• Responsible for the use of spontaneous speech and motor speech control
• If the area is damaged then people suffering from Broca’s aphasia would have trouble forming coherent sentences and words