ChapTer 2 elements of Neurology essential for Understanding the Aphasias

There is still much to be done to understand the nature of aphasia and to elucidate the organization of the brain relative to behavior. Nevertheless, since the time of Paul Broca, who was the first to show, in 1861, that a particular lesion of the cerebral cortex could lead to a disorder of language (Broca, 1861, as cited in Hécaen & Dubois, 1969), our knowledge of cerebral organization related to language has greatly advanced and the clinical repercussions of cerebral lesions have been extensively described. In this chapter, we outline briefly the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the nervous system, as well as the methods available for its study, and we then sketch the functional organization of the cerebral correlates of language. This brief overview concludes with the description of the clinical characteristics of the various forms of aphasia.