Broca's Area

• Aim: Broca noticed some patients had problems with speech production and he wanted to find out if their impediment was related to the brain
• Method: Dissected the brains of the patients to look for lesions
• Results: He found that there was an overlapping damaged area in the left frontal lobe of the patients
• Evaluation: MRI results of Broca's patients showed more damage than just Broca's area (Dronkers et al., 2007)
  
  • Dronkers results suggests that the speech production difficulty of Broca's patients may be due to more extensive brain damage than just Broca's area
  • Plaza et al., (2009) found that patients other brain areas took over the function of Broca's area if their Broca's area was damaged
• Conclusion: Broca's area is localized for some aspects of speech production but Broca's aphasia can be a combination of various lesions to brain areas beyond Broca's area
• Here is a video of Broca's patients demonstrating a lack of speech fluency