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LaPointe, L. L. (2012). Paul Broca and the origins of language in the brain

Pierre-Paul Broca: no introduction necessary and yet so much to be told. In Paul Broca and the Origins of Language in the Brain, Leonard L. LaPointe approaches the legendary figure from all possible angles—the man, the visionary, the inventor and the pioneer. With a very personal style, at times novelesque, at times travel diary, the author artfully designs 12 chapters that take the reader on a journey to the Paris of the nineteenth century, an adventure addressed to all imaginable audiences, from specialists to students and even beyond to history lovers from all possible backgrounds. “Impressionism and neuroscience, art and brain” is the unexpected opening that guides the reader in Chapter 1 (Précis) through the historical facts of the nineteenth century—the temporal framework for the most part of this volume—a time of great advancements in thought and art rooted in the turmoil of the great French revolution of 1789. It will not be the only historical reference the reader will encounter in this volume. The figure of Broca cannot be properly introduced without the context that set the stage for the development of his ideas. Ancient Greece, the Egyptian surgical papyrus, Cartesian philosophy and the scientific method and, finally, Gall and Spurzheim with their phrenology enterprise constitute noteworthy steps in the evolution of neuroanatomy and neurolinguistics that LaPointe discusses in Chapters 2 and 3. Reviews of research in language pathologies, reports of debates and descriptions of clinical cases have been available for centuries well beyond France or Europe. Bateman’s (1890) treatise on Aphasia is an example. In Chapter 4, through a very vivid narrative style, LaPointe takes the reader from contemporary Paris to the centres for veterans in the United States and the campaign hospitals of the Napoleonic wars, summarising the contributions of Broca’s most influential precursors and contemporaries. Wernicke, Lichtheim, Marie, Dejérine, Liepmann, Larrey, Lordat, Bateman and Hughlinghs Jackson, some well known and some virtually forgotten, are the main characters in a story of alliances and confrontations that has survived to this day. Concepts such as aphasia, apraxia, alalia, the observation of dissociations between lesion site and diagnosis, recovery processes and the role of compensatory mechanisms remain as their main contributions. However, despite descriptions and explanations, significant hypotheses about the localisation of language and its relation to aphasia were not formulated until the period from 1800 to 1860. Gall was the first to localise language function in the anterior lobes. He found a supporter in Bouillaud, who attributes a crucial role to the frontal lobes. Bouillaud separates speech from language and postulates the existence of two deficits: to produce