Paul Broca

Paul Pierre Broca ( born June 28, 1824 in Sainte -Foy- la -Grande at Bergerac, † July 9, 1880 in Paris) was a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist. After he was named among other things, a severe speech disorder, known as Broca 's aphasia (see the case of " Monsieur Tan" ), and the corresponding region of the brain ( Broca's area ). He described in 1861 the first time a limbic lobe, which is now called the limbic system.

Biography

Pierre -Paul Broca was born into a Protestant family. The father Benjamin Broca is a physician and surgeon of the Imperial Army, the mother Annette Thomas is the daughter of a Protestant pastor, who was Mayor of Bordeaux in the revolutionary period.

Highly talented, he is simultaneously Baccalaureus in literature, mathematics and physics. At seventeen he enrolled at the Medical Faculty of the University of Paris and receives his medical degree at twenty, in an age when his peers begin with the study.

Broca is Professor of Surgical Pathology at the University of Paris (then Académie de Paris) and is dedicated to medical research in several areas. At 24, he is already famous, showered with awards and prizes.

He seems to have had a remarkable character. His contemporaries describe him as "generous, sensitive and kind ." In 1848 he founded the Société des libres - Penseurs ( Freethinkers Society), is a supporter of Darwin's theory of natural selection and is displayed as a subversive materialist who corrupts the youth.

In tireless work he has written hundreds of books and articles, including 53 over the brain. He sought health care for the destitute to improve and advocated for public health. Among his students are Topinard Paul and Joseph Deniker mentioned.

Broca died, only 56 years old, on July 9, 1880 suddenly at an aneurysm rupture.

Scientific Work

His first scientific works are contributions to the histology of cartilage and bone, but he also studied the cancer, the treatment of the aneurysm and the infant mortality rate. His work on the neuroanatomy have contributed to a better understanding of the limbic system and the olfactory cortex ( Rhinenzephalon ).

1859 report Broca and his colleague Eugène Azam before the Académie des sciences through a surgical procedure under hypnotic anesthesia.

The case of " Monsieur Tan"

What Broca secures a place in the history of medicine, is his discovery of the speech center in the brain, now known as Broca's area, located on the third gyrus ( gyrus ) of the frontal lobe of the left brain.

He studied at the 1860 patients with aphasia ( speech disorder). His first patient named Leborgne in Paris Hôpital Kremlin -Bicêtre was only the syllable, Tan ' issue, which is why he was nicknamed " Tan". The language understanding, however, appeared not to be affected: he was still quite able to understand him asked questions. By prosodic articulation of different intonation patterns, pitch and juxtapositions of a syllable tried " Monsieur Tan" to answer the questions. Post-mortem autopsy revealed that a part of the left hemisphere of the brain between the frontal lobe and the temporal lobe had a neurosyphilitische lesion.

Broca concluded that this post should be heavily involved in speech production. From Broca's findings, the notion of lateralization, ie, the " asymmetric representation of certain functions in the brain " was born.

He presented his discovery in 1861 of the Société d' anthropologie ago in Paris ( Anthropological Society of Paris) in the course of a heated discussion with the advocates of holistic brain theory.

Broca's area is one of several areas in the brain, which together form the language center: the understanding of language used during the Wernicke's area (named after Carl Wernicke ), Broca's area, the production ( motor ) of the language controls significantly.

Anthropological research

Broca is also a pioneer of physical anthropology. He founded in 1859 the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris and École d' anthropologie 1876. He developed new instruments and new numerical indices for the craniometry. The use and abuse of his measurements and conclusions by racist ideologies was discussed at length by Stephen Jay Gould. Broca himself has made racist interpretations of his research feed. He had formulated the hypothesis that " the relative smallness of the brain of the woman at the same time of their physical and intellectual inferiority " depended.

Comparative Anatomy

Another area in which Broca has done research, the comparative anatomy of primates. He discovered for the first time healing marks on trepanned skulls from the Neolithic period. He was interested in the relation between the human skull and the brain with its mental properties and its intelligence. He challenged the thesis of Friedrich Tiedemann, who claimed that one could black and do not distinguish the white race after their cranial capacity, and measured human skulls to support his hypothesis that the smallness of their brain constitutes a characteristic inferiority of primitive peoples: " On a vu que la capacité cranienne of nègres de l' Afrique occidentale (1 372.12 cm3) inférieure est d'environ 100 cm3 à celle des races d'Europe. »

Finally, Broca was also a pioneer of brain imaging. He invented a " thermometric crown ", with which he hoped to measure the temperature changes of the skull, caused by changes in brain activity.

Developed by Broca Broca's index is used for simple determination of the normal weight of a person, but is less accurate than the body mass index ( BMI) and is hardly used anymore.

Honors and Awards

Towards the end of his life Broca was elected Sénateur à vie ( senator for life ). He was a member of the Académie de médicine and was honored by several French and foreign institutions. He was a corresponding member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory. In 1858 Broca was elected a member of the Scholars Academy Leopoldina.

Brocas name is called at the Eiffel Tower in a list of 72 names. The Hôpital Broca, a company specializing in gerontology public hospital in Paris, bears his name, as one of the three medical faculties of the Université Bordeaux II His name adorns the professional lyceum in his home town of Ste -Foy la Grande.