White matter-Maximien Parchappe and the integration of articulate language

The Imperial Academy of Medicine of Paris met in the spring of 1865 to discuss the localization of speech. One of the participants was Maximien Parchappe (1800-1866), an alienist whose research interests lay in the cerebral cortex. This article addresses Maximien Parchappe's concept that the cognitive elements of language-such as the translation of thoughts into words, the will to express them, and the means to do so-reside within the cortical gray matter, and that they are integrated through white-matter fibers. In so doing, Parchappe anticipated Carl Wernicke's linking of the posterior aspects of the dominant frontal and temporal lobes in verbal expression, and Jules Dejerine's linking of the angular gyrus and Wernicke's area in the understanding of written language. Functional imaging has revived interest in language as a network of neuronal aggregates and has given new relevance to Parchappe's concept of the functional organization of language.