Broca's Aphasia Summary

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Aphasia is the loss of speech comprehension and production as a result of brain damage. Broca’s aphasia is the inability to produce fluent speech as a result of damage to the frontal lobe. For over 20 years, researchers believed that there was a connection between Brodmann’s area and Broca’s area. Furthermore, some researchers proposed the idea of Broca’s area as a complex language production system. This system not only affect Broca’s area but other areas in the frontal lobe. Recently, researchers are reanalyzing the functions of Broca’s area. “One author has suggested that Broca’s area sub-regions might be compatible with the system of prefrontal hierarchical control”. The author proposed that the hind regions of Broca’s area breaks down …show more content…
Based on the initial definition of aphasia, it is believed that damage to Broca’s area causes the lack of speech comprehension. Thus, Damage to Broca’s area causes apraxia of speech and the inability to construct coherent sentences. Furthermore, through the use of CT scans it became known that Broca’s aphasia was not only produced by damage to Broca’s area. For instance, lower motor cortex, periventricular white matter, extension to the insula, and subjacent subcortical influences Broca’s aphasia. Additionally, Damage to these areas result in minor Broca’s aphasia. Minor Broca’s aphasia is defined as mildly incoherent speech, short sentences, and the inability to produce fluent sentences. Individuals with minor Broca’s aphasia has been observed to have foreign speech and substitution of words with non-words. It is important to note that Broca’s aphasia is an unusual brain injury. The majority of patients with damage to Broca’s area also has extensive damage in other parts of the brain. Using MRI’s, Physician Paul Broca studied the brains of two patients with lesions to midbrain. Broca concluded that Broca’s aphasia is affected by lesions to Broca’s area as well as other parts of the brain. Similarly, one can conclude that Broca’s aphasia results from considerable brain damage. Damage that only resides in Broca’s area produces