Broca’s Area: Four Misconceptions

Traditionally, Broca’s area has been described as a classical language area implicated in speech production. However, this view has recently been challenged due to growing neuroimaging evidence that shows that Broca’s area contributes not only to speech, but also to other aspects of language, supporting language non-related tasks as well. More specifi cally, the area is implicated in phonetic, phonological, lexical, semantic and syntactic tasks; in rhythmic perception, harmonic incongruity perception, tonal frequency discrimination, comprehension of artifi cial languages, time perception, calculation tasks, memory tasks, action observation and mental imagery of movement, musical syntax, processing of complex geometric patterns, in prediction of sequential patterns, and so on. Th ese fi ndings indicate that some traditional conceptions of Broca’s area do not hold. For instance, (i) P. Paul Broca’s concept of lesion causing speech loss does not coincide with what is currently called Broca’s area; (ii) Broca’s area is not an anatomical area per se; (iii) Broca’s area is not dedicated to language; (iv) Damage to Broca’s area does not cause Broca’s aphasia. In addition to discussing these issues, the present paper shows how methodological advancements in neuroimaging and cytoarchitectonic mapping techniques have changed the traditional conceptualization of an intriguing brain area. However, a principled explanation of the role of this area in cognition, perception and action, as well as in the overall dynamics of the brain, is still lacking.