‘Anatomo-biological considerations on the centers of language’: An Argentinian contribution to the 1906 Paris debate on aphasia

In 1906, the year of the renowned holistic–localizationist controversy between neurologists Pierre Marie and Jules Déjèrine in Paris, Christfried Jakob, a protagonist researcher of the cerebral cortex at the time working in Argentina, published two relevant articles entitled ‘Does Broca’s area exist?’ and ‘Anatomo-biological considerations on the centers of language’. The two articles addressed neuropsychological and developmental aspects of language functions in normality and pathology with regard to the brain areas that subserve them. The present article provides an English translation of Jakob’s second paper, on the embryonic and postnatal development of brain areas related to language. The information given and the views expressed may still shed, a century later, useful light on our understanding of brain–language relationships.