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This chapter presents a paper published by Korbinian Brodmann in 1908, which contains the first complete description of a parcellation of the whole cortical surface, one that is still widely used today. The paper is a shorter version of Brodmann's famous 1909 book.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between Broca's area and lexical-semantic processing. The first section reviews the aphasiological evidence for lexical and/or semantic impairment in the syndrome of Broca's aphasia. The second section considers the relationship between damage to Broca's area and neighboring structures and specific aspects of linguistic impairment in the syndrome, including disorders of lexical/semantic processing. Finally, the chapter reviews the contribution of functional imaging to the issue of the role of Broca's area in lexical/semantic processing.

This chapter presents some work by Paul Broca. Modern neuropsychology is believed to have begun when Paul Broca delivered a short presentation at the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1861. This famous paper presented in this chapter, and the more detailed ones that followed, are often seen as the beginning of modern research on the localization of language in the brain and of investigations into cognitive functioning in general.

This chapter sets out a strategy for investigating the evolutionary biology of language. Central here is the following thesis: In order to understand the emergence of linguistic capacity as an innovation in the hominid line, it is necessary to work backwards from language-relevant anatomy. The assumption is that each piece of the anatomical mosaic will have a different evolutionary story, and that each story will be more or less evident in ancestral species, depending on the availability of biological evidence in the fossil record. The use of this strategy is illustrated by discussing the evolution of Broca's area and the parietal-occipital-temporal junction (POT) plus Wernicke's area — areas of the brain that are ‘necessary, if not sufficient, for language’. It is argued that the complex comprising Broca's area and the POT was evolutionarily shaped to improve the neurological control of the hand and thumb, and became available for exaptation after the divergence of the hominid and pongid lineages. This position gains further support from recent work on primate neuroanatomy.

This chapter outlines a new approach to the investigation of aphasics' linguistic errors. The model represents a further development of ideas outlined in Avrutin (1999). It shows that damage to Broca's region diminishes the amount of resources necessary for conducting operations involving narrow syntax. This causes a slowdown in the process of speech production. Moreover, reduced power of this system (a direct consequence of diminished resources) may result in the situation where alternative systems become more powerful and therefore are used for the purposes of building information structure in comprehension or encoding a message. Impairment in Broca's aphasia is not limited to structures involving constituent movement (e.g., passive constructions, object relative clauses). Comprehension of pronouns and other determiners causes difficulties as well. Slow, effortful, telegraphic speech is characteristic of the same patients who demonstrate problems with comprehension of certain elements.

This chapter begins with a short review of two current methods for the study of brain language relations. It moves on to syntactic deficits in Broca's aphasia, which is argued to be restricted to syntactic movement (aka grammatical transformations). It then reviews the current experimental record in neuroimaging of the healthy brain in Broca's region and seeks convergence with the aphasia results. It considers two recent findings that have located certain intrasentential dependency relations in different portions of the right hemisphere. These results drive the conclusion that a rough brain map for syntax may be within reach. Finally, the chapter proposes dimensions along which the syntacto-topic conjecture (STC) may be explored by examining how visual maps are currently investigated.

Using the preceding chapter as a point of departure, this chapter offers a critical perspective on the notion of innate universals. It presents a “minimal nativism” view, according to which a brain area should be seen as embodying a kind of language universal if it is genetically predisposed toward fulfilling a certain sufficiently general linguistic function, for example by virtue of its strategic connectivity. On this view, Broca's area could still count as the brain locus of a linguistic universal, even if it supports other functions beside language.

A neurolinguistic approach to language is part of a performance approach that analyzes both perception and production. For production, there is much that could be possibly talked about which might be represented as cognitive structures from which some aspects are selected for possible expression. Further selection and transformation yield semantic structures (hierarchical constituents expressing objects, actions, and relationships) that constitute a semantic form. Finally, the ideas in the semantic form should be expressed in phonological form, that is, as words whose markings and ordering reflect the relationships within semantic form. This chapter extends the phonological form to embrace a wide range of ordered expressive gestures that may include speech, sign, and orofacial expressions.

Broca's area (Brodmann areas 44/45) and the immediately surrounding cortex have been shown to play a role in several aspects of linguistic, as well as nonlinguistic, processing. Given the similarities between signed and spoken languages for phonology and syntax (two domains of processing implicated as functions of Broca's area), this chapter examines whether there is any evidence that Broca's area is involved in these aspects of sign language processing and whether this involvement mirrors that found for spoken languages. It shows that the functions associated with Broca's area for spoken language parallel those for signed language. With respect to language production, imaging data indicate a critical role for Broca's area (particularly BA 45) in lexical retrieval and/or selection. More posterior cortex (BA 44) appears to be involved in the coordination of linguistic articulation, regardless of whether the articulators are manual-brachial or orofacial.

This chapter presents a model that proposes a temporofrontal network for sentence processing. The model suggests that temporal areas analyze and identify the elements at each processing phase with respect to their specific characteristics while the inferofrontal areas are responsible for aspects of sequencing and building of dependency relations. The semantic network, more specifically, is assumed to consist of the posterior portion of the superion temporal gyrus (STG) and the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) together with the more ventral portion of the inferior frontal gyri (IFG) (BA 45/47). In contrast, the network subserving online syntactic processes seems to consist of the anterior portion of the STG and the Broca's area (BA 44/45), i.e., pars triangularis/pars opercularis and the frontal operculum. Processes of late integration and reanalyis may partly be supported by the posterior portion of the STG and the basal ganglia (BG), respectively.

This chapter reviews sublexical and prelexical modes of speech processing, all types of nonspeech and music processing and speech and nonspeech production. It focuses on clustered domains and attempt to illustrate the commonalities between them. It shows that a multitude of heterogeneous tasks and processes illuminate the role of the frontal operculum in both the left and the right hemisphere with the first primarily involved in phonological processing and the latter preferentially driven by paralinguistic and nonlinguistic domains, i.e., speech complexity, music perception and production, and sound perception. Results for left and right hemisphere are discussed.

This chapter begins by distinguishing between Broca's area in neuroanatomical, neuropsychological, and functional terms. It addresses the question: Is Broca's area a natural kind? That is, does it carve brain and mind at its joints? The chapter then presents a proposal about the role of the left inferior frontal cortex, which contains Broca's area as classically defined.

Broca's area (or, more generally, the left inferior frontal region) is implicated in many language and language-related tasks. This chapter addresses the question of whether it is legitimate to move from this assertion (supported by very large numbers of lesion studies and functional neuroimaging experiments) to the theoretical claim that the exclusive (or even the core) specialization of Broca's area is the mediation of language functions. It shows that particular neuroanatomical regions, including Broca's area, change their functions consequent upon the simultaneous activation of other regions that are effectively connected to a given region.

This chapter presents excerpts from the Jülich workshop, which represent the main issues that arise when one attempts to reconcile the multiple perspectives that currently exist on Broca's region. Topics covered include anatomy and localization, diversity of functional analyses of language, representation and processing, language development, functional connectivity, functional imaging, and lesion studies.

This chapter presents a paper by John Hughlings–Jackson, the British neurologist best known for his description of epileptic convulsions. Hughlings–Jackson wrote a series of papers in which he argued that language is not localizable in any specific area of the cerebral cortex. His writings on aphasia, published from the mid-1870s on, represent the first attack on the localizationist school from an antimodular point of view—one that views cognitive deficits as a domain-general “asymbolia”.

This chapter presents a paper published by Ludwig Lichtheim in 1885. The paper on aphasia contained diagrams of the cerebral representation of language processing. All of these schema and diagrams were inspired by Wernicke's ideas and hypotheses about how the brain has nodes and connections, and about how these can be injured to produce the various types of aphasia. These diagrams are still widely used in behavioral neurology and aphasia research.

This chapter presents a paper published by Arnold Pick in 1913. Pick was the first to put the study of language disturbances in the context of modern psycholinguistic research. Agrammatism is now recognized as a central feature of Broca's aphasia. Pick's recognition of the centrality of the grammatical aspect in the deficit in Broca's aphasia paved the way to later linguistic analyses of aphasic syndromes, and thus made linguistic investigations of brain-language relations possible.

This chapter presents a paper published by Ludwig Riegele in 1931. Riegele worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin, which was one of the most advanced centers for neuroscience featuring a modern multidisciplinary approach to the brain that consisted of europathology, psychiatry, electrophysiology, comparative anatomy, and genetics. Many of Riegele's criteria for cytoarchitectonic borders can still be used in mapping efforts today.