Broca's area
Citation, DOI, disclosures and article data
At the time the article was created Julian Maingard had no recorded disclosures.
View Julian Maingard's current disclosuresAt the time the article was last revised Rohit Sharma had no financial relationships to ineligible companies to disclose.
View Rohit Sharma's current disclosures- Brodmann area 44
- Broca's area
- Broca's areas
- Brodmann area 45
- Broca area
Broca's area (Brodmann areas 44 and 45) is an area of the lateral frontal lobe in the dominant hemisphere concerned with the production of speech.
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Gross anatomy
Broca's area is located in the posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis (Brodmann area 44) and pars triangularis (Brodmann area 45)) of the dominant hemisphere, anterior to the anterior commissure line. It is anterior to the primary motor cortex on the precentral gyrus.
Relations
It is bounded anteriorly by the ascending ramus of the lateral (Sylvian) fissure and posteriorly by the precentral sulcus.
Arterial supply
superior division of the middle cerebral artery (MCA)
Neurophysiology
This language-eloquent area is most often located in the left hemisphere, also in left-handed individuals 4. However, right-hemispheric dominance may occur in roughly 4% of right-handed individuals and may be as high as 27% in extreme left-handers 5.
Maybe even more interestingly, there appears to be significant plasticity of organization in the brain regarding the shift of language-eloquent hemisphere 5. This has been demonstrated to occur in right-handed patients under experimental conditions with left-sided (virtually reversible) perisylvian lesions by functional MRI (fMRI) 3.
Additionally, some doubt has been cast on the role of Broca's area in long term speech production outcomes following damage to Broca's area, with other regions (e.g. anterior arcuate fasciculus) implicated as being as, if not more, important 7.
Related pathology
References
- 1. Keller SS, Roberts N, Hopkins W. A comparative magnetic resonance imaging study of the anatomy, variability, and asymmetry of Broca's area in the human and chimpanzee brain. J. Neurosci. 2009;29 (46): 14607-16. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2892-09.2009 - Free text at pubmed - Pubmed citation
- 2. Thomas P. Naidich, MD, Mauricio Castillo, MD, Soonmee Cha, MD et al. Imaging of the Brain. (2012) ISBN: 9781416050094 - Google Books
- 3. Krieg S, Sollmann N, Hauck T et al. Functional Language Shift to the Right Hemisphere in Patients with Language-Eloquent Brain Tumors. PLoS One. 2013;8(9):e75403. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0075403 - Pubmed
- 4. Robert B. Daroff. Bradley's Neurology in Clinical Practice. (2012) ISBN: 9781437704341 - Google Books
- 5. Finger S, Buckner RL, Buckingham H. Does the right hemisphere take over after damage to Broca's area? the Barlow case of 1877 and its history. Brain Lang. 2003;85 (3): 385-95. Pubmed citation
- 6. Knecht S, Dräger B, Deppe M et-al. Handedness and hemispheric language dominance in healthy humans. Brain. 2001;123 Pt 12: 2512-8. Pubmed citation
- 7. Gajardo-Vidal A, Lorca-Puls D, team P et al. Damage to Broca’s Area Does Not Contribute to Long-Term Speech Production Outcome After Stroke. Brain. 2021;144(3):817-32. doi:10.1093/brain/awaa460 - Pubmed
Incoming Links
- Trepanation
- Dual stream language processing models
- Functional neuroanatomy
- Frontotemporal lobar degeneration
- Frontal lobe
- Inferior frontal gyrus
- Brodmann areas
- Related articles (multiple choice questions)
- Middle cerebral artery
- Eloquent cortex
- Broca aphasia
- Pars opercularis
- Supratentorial intracranial mass in an adult (an approach)
- Association fibres of the brain
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