Broca's area
From Psy3242
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Location
The language area (located in the left hemisphere) of the brain is broken up into two parts: the Broca's area and the Wernicke's area. The Broca's area is named after Paul Broca. It lies in the opercular and triangular sections of the inferior frontal gyrus of the frontal lobe, and is said to be reasonable for motor speech. For more information on the Wernicke's area, visit the Wernicke's area on this wiki.
Parts
The Broca's area can be broken up into two parts: pars triangularis and pars opercularis.
- Pars triangularis is located in the front inferior frontal gyrus. This area helps people comprehend language. While most of the brain is symmetrical, this portion is bigger than its right-side counterpart. In short, this means that the portion of a person's brain used to comprehended language is larger than its right side counterpart.
- Pars opercularis is located in the back inferior frontal gyrus and covers part of the insula. This area facilitates the coordination between the speech organs, so that language can be produced. Note: There has been a link discovered between abnormal blood flow to this region and autism.
Damage to this Area
For more information on this area, including notable patients, please check out Broca's aphasia.
Interesting Fact
Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist and head of the fMRI (Functional magnetic resonance imaging) lab at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital, studied bilingual adults who learned two languages as infants in comparison to those who learned two languages at age eleven. She discovered that those who learned two languages as infants have just one Broca’s area, whereas those who learned two languages at age 11 had two separate areas, one Broca’s area for each.
