Between 1841 and 1861, the year of his death, French Louis Victor Leborne he could only pronounce the word “tan”, for this he was known how “patient tan” or “patient tan”one of the most important neurological cases for the development of modern neuroanatomics. Lebrogne, born in 1910, had started to suffer from epilepsy as a young man but at the age of 30 he was caught by Broca aphasia (inability to speak, if not precisely to repeat “tan”) and Right Emightia (paralysis of the right side of the face). According to what was hypothesized in recent times, the repetition of the words “tan tan” could be due to a memory of childhoodlinked to the mills that produced the tannin.
His brain was examined after his death by the doctor and anatomist Paul Brocawhich discovered obvious and localized injuries in the frontal area, precisely in the second and third circumstances of the left hemisphere. This led Broca to formulate the hypothesis that that area is the neural location of the mechanisms that make spoken language possible.
Who was Luis Victor Leborne, the patient “Tan”
According to what reported by the magazine The sciences who reports the studies conducted by the historian Polish Cezary Diuanski, who in turn published an article on the “Journal of History of Neuropsychology” dedicated to case of the patient “Tan tan” -Victor Leborne was originally from More-Sur-Loing, a village south of Paris. He had started suffer from epileptic crises In youth, but still leads a normal life, producing forms of shoes that then sells to the shoemakers.
Around thirty years, however, It completely loses the word: This is exactly what the acquaintances are alarmed who, after a couple of months in which the inability to communicate persists, bring him to the hospital. Leborne is not married and has no tight relatives who can deal with him: for this reason he remains in the hospital for more than twenty years, until the moment of his death.
Here he meets Dr. Broca, who then decides to carry out insights to an autoptic basis And to carefully study the brain of Leborgne: he also decides to then give it to Dupuytren anatomical museumscientific institute today closed and whose material has been transferred to Campus Jussieu together with other collections of the Faculty of Medicine of the Sorbonne.
To explain because Victor Leborne repeated only the words “Tan”ACCHE A hypothesis advances: it could be a childhood memory, a word linked to his first years of life. Being originally from the village of More-Sur-Loing, it could be connected to the water mills that produced tannina substance derived from the cortex of the trees, for the tanning of the skin. Moulin in Tànthey are called in French: that Tan comes right from there?
Motor aphasia: studies and evolutions of research thanks to Broca and the patient “Tan”
The observation of the patient’s brain “Tan tan” brocade brocade to continue his insights and observe Other brains of deceased patients and affected by the same disorder, and thus starts the fundamental studies that allow to declare the correlation between injuries of that specific area of the brain and the inability to speak.
In 1862, the French doctor Armand Trousseau In fact, it presents the term to a congress “aphasia”or inability to speak, and a few years later David FerrierScottish psychologist and neurologist who deepens the concept of “Motor region of the brain” to speak in all respects of “Broca aphasia” and “Broca region”opening new paths to neurology and brain surgery.
In reality, the publication of Broca’s study leads the scientific community to take controversial positions, including that of neurologist Pierre Mariethen active in the Salpêtrière hospital, which did not agree on the exact position of the injury, a point of view that is also taken up by a study published in 2000, which sees Leborgne’s aphasia as “global”therefore more extensive, and not relative only to that specific area.
In some subsequent studies it was also assumed that the lesions in Leborgne’s brain were caused by cysts due to syphilisbut in reality – thus highlights the historian Diuanski – in Broca’s studies there is no trace of this. The brain of the patient “Tan Tan” has also been the subject of studies in recent times, including scan of greater precision carried out in the 80s, from which it emerged that the injury was even deeper of what was highlighted by Dr. Broca. Further insights can be made by referring to Numerous studies on the subject.
