Broca-Wernicke theories: A historical perspective

This chapter reviews the history of some of the theoretical models of aphasia, with a focus on the classic Broca-Wernicke model. It sets off in the 19th century when postmortem studies of patients with aphasia led to the first anatomic models of cerebral language representation. I chose to focus on the famous Broca-Wernicke model, not only because it remains influential in daily clinical decision making, but also because of the intriguing fact that the legacy of these physicians differs from their original opinions and theories. The chapter ends in the second half of the 20th century, before the advent of CT and MRI. Over time, there has never been much consensus on the anatomic location of specific language functions, and there remains an ongoing discussion between those who assign language functions to certain anatomic brain regions, and those who advocate that language functions cannot be localized as they are widely distributed across the brain. In retrospect, many historic figures such as Broca, Wernicke, Goldstein, or Luria, actually proposed theories that combined both localist and holist views, already reflecting our modern scientific views on language representation.