<Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Anatomical terms of neuroanatomy (edit on Wikidata) </Td> </Tr> <P> Broca's area or the Broca area / broʊˈkɑː / or / ˈbroʊkə / is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left, of the hominid brain with functions linked to speech production . </P> <P> Language processing has been linked to Broca's area since Pierre Paul Broca reported impairments in two patients . They had lost the ability to speak after injury to the posterior inferior frontal gyrus of the brain . Since then, the approximate region he identified has become known as Broca's area, and the deficit in language production as Broca's aphasia, also called expressive aphasia . Broca's area is now typically defined in terms of the pars opercularis and pars triangularis of the inferior frontal gyrus, represented in Brodmann's cytoarchitectonic map as areas 44 and 45 of the dominant hemisphere . Studies of chronic aphasia have implicated an essential role of Broca's area in various speech and language functions . Further, fMRI studies have also identified activation patterns in Broca's area associated with various language tasks . However, slow destruction of the Broca's area by brain tumors can leave speech relatively intact, suggesting its functions can shift to nearby areas in the brain . </P> <P> Broca's area is often identified by visual inspection of the topography of the brain either by macrostructural landmarks such as sulci or by the specification of coordinates in a particular reference space . The currently used Talairach and Tournoux atlas projects Brodmann's cytoarchitectonic map onto a template brain . Because Brodmann's parcelation was based on subjective visual inspection of cytoarchitectonic borders and also Brodmann analyzed only one hemisphere of one brain, the result is imprecise . Further, because of considerable variability across brains in terms of shape, size, and position relative to sulcal and gyral structure, a resulting localization precision is limited . </P>

Broca’s area is the area of the brain that controls