Abstract
It is customary in a book on brain to defer a discussion of language and its substrates in the brain to one of the later chapters. But interestingly modern neurology began in 1861, when the noted French neurologist Paul Broca discovered that damage to a certain part of the brain is accompanied with impairment in speech. It is perhaps the first instance in the history of neurology when the link between a mental function and its corresponding “seat” in the brain is clearly established. Broca’s work actually began as a reaction to the wild claims of Franz Gall, the founder of a pseudoscience known as phrenology. Phrenologists claimed that a person’s character can be read off the bumps on the head (see Chap. 1).
All speech and action comes readily prepared out of eternal Silence.
—Sri Aurobindo.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
For some unknown reason, the original term that Broca used for aphasia was aphemia, which is derived from a Greek word meaning “infamous.” Noting the absurdity of this nomenclature, a critic named M. Trousseau proposed the new term aphasia, which stuck.
References
Backman, J., Bruck, M., Hebert, M., & Seidenberg, M. S. (1984). Acquisition and use of spelling-sound correspondences in reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 38, 114–133.
Broca, P. (1865). Cited in Diamond, S. (1972). The double brain. London: Churchill-Livingstone.
Critchley, M. (1970). Aphasiology and other aspects of language. London: Edward Arnold.
Dalin, O. (1745). Cited in Benton, A. L., & Joynt, R. J. (1960). Early descriptions of aphasia. Archives of Neurology, 3, 205–222.
Damasio, A., & Damasio, H. (1992, September). Brain and language, special issue on brain and mind. Scientific American.
Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man and selection in relation to sex (Vol. 1. p. 320). Murray, 1888.
Dronkers, N. F., Plaisant, O., Iba-Zizen, M. T., & Cabanis, E. A. (2007). Paul Broca’s historic cases: High resolution MR imaging of the brains of Leborgne and Lelong. Brain, 130, 1432–1441.
Hickok, G., Bellugi, U., & Klima, E. S. (1998). The neural organization of language: Evidence from sign language Aphasia. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(4), 129–136.
Hinton, G. E., & Shallice, T. (1991). Lesioning an attractor network: Investigations of acquired dyslexia. Psychological Review, 98(1), 74–95.
Jackson, J. H. (1958). In J. Taylor (Ed.), Selected writings of John Hughlings Jackson. New York: Basic Books.
Joynt, R. J. (1964). Paul Pierre Broca: His contribution to the knowledge of aphasia. Cortex, 1, 206–213.
Lichtheim, L. (1885). On aphasia. Brain, 7, 433–484.
Pearce, J. M. (2009). Hugo Karl Liepmann and apraxia. Clinical Medicine, 9(5), 466–470.
Plaut, D. C., McClelland, J. L., Seidenberg, M. S., & Patterson, K. (1996). Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains. Psychological Review, 103(1), 56–115.
Pulvermüller, F. (2001). Brain reflections of words and their meaning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 517–524.
Pulvermüller, F. (2002). The neuroscience of language: On brain circuits of word and serial order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pulvermüller, F., Mohr, B., Sedat, N., Halder, B., & Rayman, J. (1996). Word class specific deficits in Wernicke’s aphasia. Neurocase, 2, 203–212.
Rasmussen, T., & Milner, B. (1977). The role of early left-brain injury in determining lateralization of cerebral speech functions. In S. Dimond & D. Blizzard (Eds.), Evolution and lateralization of the brain. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
Springer, S., & Deutsch, G. (1981). Left brain, right brain. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chakravarthy, V.S. (2019). A Gossamer of Words. In: Demystifying the Brain. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3320-0_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3320-0_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3319-4
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3320-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)