678 PROBLEMS IN REGARD TO LOCALTZATION OF 



Broadbent indeed maintains that, as a rnle, loss of 

 Speech is only temporary with lesions of the left Corpus 

 Striatum, or of those parts of the outgoing fibres from the 

 third frontal gyrus which are contiguous to this body. And 

 he ingeniously attempts to explain its supposed speedy 

 restoration in these cases. If the left third frontal gyrus 

 be itself undamaged, and if the fibres of the Corpus 

 Callosum which extend from it to the right third frontal 

 gyrus be intact, then the outgoing stimuli not being able 

 to take their usual course may, he thinks, find their 'way 

 round ' from the left to the right third frontal and thence 

 downw^ards to the Corpus Striatum of the right side.* 

 In these cases loss of Speech would possibly only exist 

 for a few weeks, till the new route and new mode of action 

 could be thoroughly opened up and established.! It is 

 difficult, however, to understand how the previous educa- 

 tion and organization of this right Corpus Striatum can 

 have been brought up to the stage necessary to enable it 

 speedily to assume such functions, if, to take the most 

 favourable supposition, only feeble and ineffective stimuli 

 have previously been reaching it. 



There are difficulties also in the way of the acceptance 

 of some of the reasoning upon which this theory is based. 



* Inability on the part of an Aphasic person to learn to Speak 

 from the right side of the Brain would thus be found to depend 

 upon couditions precisely analogous to those producing in a right- 

 sided Hemiplegic an inability to learn to Write with the left hand 

 {i.e., from the right side of the Brain). Speech would be impos- 

 sible if the Auditory Centre, and Writing would be impossible if 

 the Visual Centre, in the left Hemisphere were destroyed; or, 

 eimilar disabilities would exist if the fibres of the Corpus Callo- 

 sum respectively connecting either of these left Centres with its 

 corres[)onding Centre of the opposite Hemisphere were cut across 

 by disease. 



t " Brit. Med. Jrnl," April 8, 1876, p. 435. 



