Broca's Aphasia And Wernicke: A Comparative Analysis

Reading about Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia was very interesting because these two men contributed greatly to have a better understanding of the brain and language. Mr. Broca, a French physician argued that the left frontal lobe is specialized for language. With that being said, he proved with multiple patients who had a localized damage to the third convolution of the left frontal lobe were unable to produce language, but did comprehend it. This is due to it being near the motor cortex on the frontal lobe which controls expression and controls outgoing motor movements as articulation of speech. In contrast, Mr. Wernicke, a psychiatrist argued that damage to the first convolution of the temporal lobe in the left hemisphere made patients
not be able to comprehend speech, however they could produce it with error. With that being said, the temporal lobe controls comprehension and since the damage was near the auditory cortex the patients with this damage will not be able to comprehend. In addition, these two men shared the same localization of language in the left hemisphere, but Mr. Wernicke went a step further to subdivide the left hemisphere to serve two different language functions; A frontal lobe controls expressions and the temporal lobe controls comprehension.