The battle for Broca's region

Yosef Grodzinsky*, Andrea Santi

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

273 Scopus citations

Abstract

The intense effort to characterize Broca's region has produced many views on its anatomy and function. Here, we present the leading approaches and consider ways to adjudicate among them empirically. Anatomically, we focus on the cytoarchitecture of Brodmann areas 44 and 45, which constitute Broca's region. Functionally, we discuss four views: action perception, working memory, syntactic complexity and syntactic movement. We compare these views, reflect on how they can be distinguished experimentally and review relevant aphasia and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. Although no single hypothesis accounts for all of the data, the role of Broca's region in language comprehension is best explained by the syntactic movement account. This conclusion opens the door for an attempt to define general principles for the neural representation of linguistic knowledge.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)474-480
Number of pages7
JournalTrends in Cognitive Sciences
Volume12
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2008
Externally publishedYes

Funding

FundersFunder number
National Institutes of Health000494
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication DisordersR29DC000494
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
CRC Health Group
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

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