History
Expressive aphasia was first identified by the French neurologist Paul Broca. By examining the brains of deceased individuals having acquired expressive aphasia in life, he concluded that language ability is localized in the ventroposterior region of the frontal lobe. One of the most important aspects of Paul Broca's discovery was the observation that the loss of proper speech in expressive aphasia is due to the brain's loss of ability to produce language, as opposed to the mouth's loss of ability to produce words.
The discoveries of Paul Broca were made during the same period of time as the German Neurologist Carl Wernicke, who was also studying brains of aphasiacs post-mortem and identified the region now known as Wernicke's area. Discoveries of both men contributed to the concept of localization, which states that specific brain functions are all localized to a specific area of the brain. While both men made significant contributions to the field of aphasia, it was Carl Wernicke who realized the difference between patients with aphasia that could not produce language and those that could not comprehend language (the essential difference between expressive and receptive aphasia).
Read more about this topic: Expressive Aphasia
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)