Paul Broca and the Origins of Language in the Brain

Description

Pierre Paul Broca was a child prodigy. He fulfilled his promise by becoming a brilliant neurologist, surgeon, and anthropologist. Perhaps his most lasting contribution to neuroscience was his proposal that the third frontal convolution of the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain is the seat of that most human attribute, the production of articulate speech and language. This notion was advanced by detailing the autopsy findings, with quite evident and circumscribed lesions, in the brains of his two now famous cases, Leborgne (known as “Tan,” for that is all he could say) and Lelong. Broca’s presentations were milestones in the history of the neuroscience of language and the brain, but they were only more defined echoes of ideas that had preceded him.

Undergraduate and graduate students as well as practicing professionals and clinicians in psychology, neurolinguistics, cognitive psychology, communication science and disorders, neurology, neurosurgery, neuropsychiatry, nursing and health-related professions, and philosophy of science will be interested in this book. It is different from others like it in that it presents aspects of the personal lives of these French brains who sparked the notion of a place in the brain for human language. It embraces a more empathic and humanistic approach to understanding people and their disorders as well as to what may drive the process of science and patients as “specimens.”

Audience
Primary Subject: Speech and Language Pathology / Neurogenics
Audience Level: Professional

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Précis

Chapter 2. Early Times: Deep Sulci of History

Descartes: Reason and the Scientific Method

Chapter 3. Phrenology and Serendipitous Bumps

Franz Joseph Gall

Time Line of Phrenology
Phrenology’s Principles
Faculties and Head Bumps
Terms Used to Differentiate the Sizes of Organs

According to George Combe (1853)
Spurzheim’s Tour
Flourens
Sex and Amativeness
The American Tour
The Combe Brothers

Chapter 4. Relics of Aphasia: The Artifacts of Lost Words

Liepmann and Apraxia
Time for Lichtheim
Strange Words Recalled in Literature
Larrey: An Unlikely Aphasiologist
Lordat: Alalia and Early Accounts of Aphasia
Bateman, Leeches, and Other Novel Descriptions of Aphasia

Chapter 5. Turmoil, Revolt, and Enlightenment:
Historical Context for Advances in Brain Science

A Wondrous and Dreadful Machine

Dr. Guillotin: Severer of French Heads
A Look of Astonishment
French Turbulence: Kings and Revolutions
Napoleon and the 19th Century

Chapter 6. Cortical Localization of Function

Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud: The Anterior Lobes
Bouillaud’s Alleged Folly
Simon Alexandre Ernest Aubertin and the Catalytic Spatula Case
Gratiolet: Adversary of Aubertin and Broca
British Expansions on Cortical Localization of Function
Stendhal’s Shrunken Testicles and Transient Aphasia
Finger and the Debates
1861: A Year Laden with Historical Episodes
Prodigious Debates: The Brain and Its Doings
Broca Listens

Chapter 7. Broca’s Nascent Years
The Caves

The Brocas and Huguenot Persecution
Broca’s Village
Broca’s Historians
Broca’s Lineage
Happy Birthday to Paul
Samuel-Jean Pozzi, Eulogist, Biographer, and Rake
Paul Prodigy
Broca Leaves Home
A Carriage Ride and a Thinker
Savants Move to Paris: Again, the Brain and Art

Chapter 8. Medical Student and Developing Dissident

On the Rues Where He Lived
Carl Sagan
History
Clinical Education
Fetid Tonsils and Insurrection

Chapter 9. A Massive Thesis and Graduation

Culmination of Medical Studies
Finally and Efficiently, A Doctor
Freethinkers Society
Life in Paris
Paris Makeover
Wife in Paris
Art, Violin, and Iodine
Mme. Augustine Broca

Chapter 10. Landmark Cases: M. Leborgne and M. Lelong

The Legendary French Brains
Leborgne
Conclusions After Examining “Tan” Leborgne’s Brain
Lelong
Pictures at an Exhibition
Broca on Language, Articulated Speech, and Aphemia
Precedence and the Pair a Dax
Much Earlier Precedence on Hemispheric Specialization and Localization

Chapter 11. Broca’s Auxiliary Contributions

Priority and Precedence with a Modicum of Appreciation
Limbic System
Cancer
Broca and Handedness
Anthropology
The French Anthropology Society: A Venue for Pioneering Presentations and Debate
School of Anthropology
Cornflowers and Hybrids
Genetic Interruption
Anthropometry and Cephalametrics
Controversy and Racism

The Full Moon, Interpretation, and Refutability
Neuroimaging and Broca’s Thermometric Crown
Trepanation and Surgery
The French Senate

Chapter 12. Broca’s Legacy

Broca’s Death
Eulogies and Biographies

Appendix A. Green Translation of Broca’s 1861 Paper on the Faculty of Articulated Language

Appendix B. Broca Time Line (2012)

Appendix C. Editorial—Broca’s Brain: Brother, Wherefore Art Thou?

Appendix D. Permission to Access the Collections of the Musee de l’Homme, Paris

References

Index

About the Author

Leonard LaPointe, PhD
Leonard L. LaPointe, PhD, received his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Colorado. He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor of Communication Science and Disorders at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Dr. LaPointe has served invited visiting professorships in Australia, Hong Kong, and New Zealand, and also lectures worldwide.