Surgeon and anthropologist, born in Sainte-Foy-le-Grande, SW France. He was the first to locate the speech centre in the brain (Broca's area), and was also a major influence on the development of physical anthropology in France.
Paul Pierre Broca (June 28, 1824 – July 9, 1880) was a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist.
Education and research
Broca was a brilliant student.
Broca soon became a professor of surgical pathology at the University of Paris.
Speech research
Broca is most famous for his discovery of the speech production center of the brain located in the frontal lobes (now known as the Broca's area). He arrived at this discovery by studying the brains of aphasic patients (persons with speech and language disorders resulting from brain injuries), particularly the brain of his first patient in the Bicêtre Hospital, Leborgne, nicknamed "Tan" due to his inability to clearly speak any words other than "tan".
In 1861, through post-mortem autopsy, Broca determined that Tan had a lesion caused by syphilis in the left cerebral hemisphere. Although history credits this discovery to Broca, it should be noted that another French neurologist, Marc Dax, made similar observations a generation earlier.
Patients with damage to Broca's area and/or to neighboring regions of the left inferior frontal lobe are often categorized clinically as having Broca's aphasia. This type of aphasia, which often involves impairments in speech output, can be contrasted with Wernicke's aphasia, named for Karl Wernicke, which is characterized by damage to more posterior regions of the left hemisphere (in the superior temporal lobe), and by greater impairments in speech comprehension.
Anthropology research
Broca was also a pioneer in the study of physical anthropology. Careful examination of the Peruvian skull left no doubt in Broca's mind that "advanced surgery" had been performed in the New World before the European conquest.
Broca advanced the science of cranial anthropometry by developing many new types of measuring instruments (craniometers) and numerical indices. The uses that racist ideologues, and even reputable scientists, made of Broca's measurements and conclusions have been analyzed by Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man (1981) and by his biographer, Francis Schiller. Broca's work is also featured in Carl Sagan's book Broca's Brain. Francisco Goya had his skull hidden and not buried with the rest of his body as a direct response to Broca's work in this area.
Anatomy research
Another field in which Broca contributed significantly was the comparative anatomy of primates.
Personal life
As a personality, Broca was a remarkable individual. Broca was denounced by authorities as a subversive, materialist, and corrupter of the youth after he founded a society of freethinkers in 1848 sympathetic to Charles Darwin's theories.
Near the end of his life, Paul Broca was elected a lifetime member of the French Senate. Broca died in Paris in 1880.
Broca's Legacy
The discovery of the Broca's area revolutionized the understanding of speech production. New research has found that dysfunction in the Broca's area may lead to other speech disorders such as stuttering and apraxia of speech. Recent anatomical neuroimaging studies have shown that the pars opercularis of the Broca's area is anatomically smaller in individuals who stutter whereas the pars triangularis appears to be normal.
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