Brain Physiology
Two areas of the cerebral cortex are necessary for speech. Broca's area, named after its discoverer, French neurologist Paul Broca (1824-1880), is in the frontal lobe, usually on the left, near the motor cortex controlling muscles of the lips, jaws, soft palate and vocal cords. When damaged by a stroke or injury, comprehension is unaffected but speech is slow and labored and the sufferer will talk in "telegramese". Wernicke's area, discovered in 1874 by German neurologist Carl Wernicke (1848-1904), lies to the back of the temporal lobe, again, usually on the left, near the areas receiving auditory and visual information. Damage to it destroys comprehension - the sufferer speaks fluently but nonsensically. Some researchers have explored the connections between brain physiology, neuroscience, and other elements of physiology to that of communication. Communibiology first proposed by Beatty and McCroskey address these issues and presents a set of specific axioms about these phenomena.
Read more about this topic: Speech
Famous quotes containing the words brain and/or physiology:
“It is more than likely that the brain itself is, in origin and development, only a sort of great clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserved.... This hypothesis ... would explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter of images.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“A physician’s physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric’s divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)