Research report 2004 - Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Broca’s legacy: new ideas about the function of a major language centre of the brain

Authors
Bornkessel, Ina
Departments

Neuropsychologie (Prof. Dr. Angela Friederici)
MPI für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, Leipzig

Summary
Of the language centres of the human brain, Broca’s region in the left frontal lobe is arguably the most famous. While this brain region was originally thought to be responsible for language production, research during the last decades has focused increasingly on its possible role in language comprehension. In particular, Broca’s region is activated more strongly during the comprehension of sentences in which the object precedes the subject. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences have recently proposed a new explanation for such findings, which assumes that Broca’s region plays a crucial role in the sequential ordering of different linguistic information types.

For the full text, see the German version.

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