Biopsychology: Language Centres: Broca’s Area

The Broca’s area is named after Paul Broca, who discovered this region while treating a patient named Leborgne, who was more commonly referred to as ‘Tan’. Tan could understand spoken language but was unable to produce any coherent words, and could only say ‘Tan’.

Tan could understand spoken language but was unable to produce any coherent words, and could only say ‘Tan’. After Tan’s death, Broca conducted a post-mortem examination on Tan’s brain and discovered that he had a lesion in the left frontal lobe. This led Broca to conclude that this area was responsible for speech production. People with damage to this area experience Broca’s aphasia, which results in slow and inarticulate speech