#paul broca

[lindahall]

Paul Broca – Scientist of the Day

Paul Broca, a French physician, anatomist, pathologist, and physical anthropologist, was born June 28, 1824, in Bordeaux. 

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[espacio-sinaptico]

Paul Pierre Broca

Se cree que en un principio quería ser ingeniero, pero al morir su hermana mayor se decidió por la medicina para poder curar a la gente.  A sus 20 años se graduó de la Escuela de Medicina Hotel Dieu en París donde se convirtió en el profesor más joven de Cirugía Patológica y en un destacado investigador en especial en temas de cáncer y  por supuesto patología cerebral.

Fundó la Sociedad de Librepensadores que defendía la investigación libre

Fundó la Sociedad Antropológica de París basada en la antropometría.

Identificó el área de Broca como centro del habla en la  tercera circunvolución del lóbulo frontal izquierdo de la corteza cerebral, la lesión en esa área se denomina afasia de Broca.

Desarrolló más de 20 instrumentos para hacer mediciones craneales.

Escribió más de 100 libros, 59 de los cuales son tratados sobre el cerebro.

Recibió diversos reconocimientos y doctorados honorarios en Francia y el extranjero.

Se casó a los 34 años y tuvo 2 hijos muy reconocidos en el ámbito médico.

Su nombre se encuentra inscrito en la Torre Eiffel.

Irónicamente falleció de un aneurisma cerebral a los 56 años.

[cure-your-delusions]

[principleofplenitude]

For this crime against olfaction, McGann accuses Paul Broca, a 19th-century French neuroscientist. Broca was a materialist who argued that the mind arose from the brain—a position that brought vigorous opposition from the Catholic Church, which believed in a separate and disembodied soul. This intellectual battle colored Broca’s interpretation of the brain. For example, he noted that the lobes at the front of the human brain, which had been linked to speech and thought, are relatively bigger than those of other animals. By contrast, he noticed that our olfactory bulbs—a pair of structures that govern our sense of smell—are relatively smaller, flatter, and positioned less prominently. Broca thought that those differences were meaningful and related. Our enlarged frontal lobes were the seat of our free will—the thing that made humans unique. Our olfactory bulbs, however, controlled an animalistic sense that compelled base behaviors like eating and sex. He reasoned that “for there to be free will, there must have been a reduction in smell,” says McGann.

“The Myth That Humans Have Poor Smell is Nonscents” from The Atlantic

[run-of-the-mill-username]

I’ve been a Psychology student so long that I have developed a head canon in which Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke were real life BFFs.

[hyperallergic]

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — As soon as you enter Blackwood Gallery, a one-room space tucked into the University of Toronto Erindale Campus, you are immersed into the exhibit The Figure in the Carpet. The main display consists of seemingly opaque black vitrines on a carpet of multicolored squares. The set-up is simplistic yet confronts a battle that museums and galleries have been faced with for centuries: How do we combat colonialism and the troubled history of ethnographies?

Picking Apart Outmoded Museum Practices

[baerpiss]

I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.

Paul Broca

[catafalques]

Broca-type occipital crochet, Paris, France, 1870-1890: Invented by Paul Broca (1824-1880), a French surgeon and anthropologist, this device was used by him to measure the inclination of the occipital bone at the back of the head. The inclination of the back of the head was believed to be an indication of race or ethnicity. Broca devised new instruments and research methods to collect masses of measurements of the human body and particularly the skull. The instrument was made by Mathieu, a surgical instrument maker in Paris.