Broca's area facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Brain: Broca's area
Quick facts for kids
Broca's area is made up of Brodmann areas 44 (pars opercularis) and 45 (pars triangularis)

Broca's area (shown in red)
Part of	Frontal lobe
Artery	Middle cerebral
Vein	Superior sagittal sinus

Broca's area is a region in the brain of humans and other hominids. It is in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left. It works as part of "speech production".

Language processing has been linked to Broca's area after Pierre Paul Broca. Broca did autopsies on patients who had difficuty speaking when they were alive. He found damage to a particular area of the brain. They had lost the ability to speak after injury to the posterior inferior frontal gyrus of the brain.

Since then, the region he identified has become known as Broca's area. The deficit in language production is Broca's aphasia, also called 'expressive aphasia'.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have identified activation patterns in Broca's area associated with various language tasks. However, slow destruction of the Broca's area by brain tumors can leave speech relatively intact. This suggests that, given time, its functions can shift to nearby areas in the brain.