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Broca's AreaBroca's area is the section of the human brain (in the opercular and triangular sections of the inferior frontal gyrus of the frontal lobe of the cortex) which is involved in language processing, speech production and comprehension. It can also be described as Brodmann's Area 44 and 45 and is connected to Wernicke's area by a neural pathway called the arcuate fasciculus. Broca's area is named after Paul Pierre Broca, who first described it in 1861, after conducting a post mortem on a speech impaired patient. During speech production, it is thought that content words are selected in Wernicke's area, grammatical refinements are added in Broca's area, and then the information is sent to the motor cortex. During speech comprehension, Broca's areas is thought to be involved in assessing the syntax and structure of speech while listening. Some theories hold that speech information is transported from the auditory area to Wernicke's area for evaluation of the significance of content words, then to Broca's area for analysis of syntax. People suffering from damage to this area may show a condition called Broca's aphasia (sometimes known as expressive aphasia, motor aphasia, or nonfluent aphasia) where they are unable to understand or create grammatically complex sentences; their speech will contain almost nothing but content words. For example, in the following passage, a Broca's aphasic patient is trying to explain how he came to the hospital for dental surgery. "Yes... ah... Monday... er... Dad and Peter H... (his own name), and Dad.... er... hospital... and ah... Wednesday... Wednesday, nine o'clock... and oh... Thursday... ten o'clock, ah doctors... two... an' doctors... and er... teeth... yah."1. See also References 1Goodglass, H. & Geschwind, N. (1976) Language disorders. In E. Carterette and M.P. Friedman (eds.) Handbook of Perception: Language and Speech. Vol II. New York: Academic Press.
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