Editing Broca's area (section)

===Speaking without Broca's area===

Damage to Broca's area is commonly associated with telegraphic speech made up of content vocabulary. For example, a person with Broca's aphasia may say something like, "Drive, store. Mom." meaning to say, "My mom drove me to the store today." Therefore, the content of the information is correct, but the grammar and fluidity of the sentence is missing.<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.asha.org/PRPSpecificTopic.aspx?folderid=8589934663&section=Signs_and_Symptoms |title = Aphasia: Signs & Symptoms}}</ref>

The essential role of the Broca's area in speech production has been questioned since it can be destroyed while leaving language nearly intact. In one case of a computer engineer, a slow-growing [[glioma]] tumor was removed. The tumor and the surgery destroyed the left [[inferior frontal gyrus|inferior]] and [[middle frontal gyrus]], the head of the [[caudate nucleus]], the anterior limb of the [[internal capsule]], and the anterior [[Insular cortex|insula]]. However, there were minimal language problems three months after removal and the individual returned to his professional work. These minor problems include the inability to create syntactically complex sentences including more than two subjects, multiple causal [[Conjunction (grammar)|conjunction]]s, or [[reported speech]]. These were explained by researchers as due to [[working memory]] problems. They also attributed his lack of problems to extensive compensatory mechanisms enabled by [[neural plasticity]] in the nearby cerebral cortex and a shift of some functions to the homologous area in the right hemisphere.<ref name=pmid19274574/>