The preserved brains of two patients studied by Paul Broca in the 1860s. Both could understand language but could only speak single syllables. Their damaged left frontal lobes proved that specific brain areas control specific language functions.
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The patient called "Tan"
In a university collection in Paris, two brains float in glass jars of alcohol. These specimens belonged to two 19th-century men who changed our understanding of the brain. They were patients of the French physician and anatomist Paul Broca. The first, and most famous, was Louis Victor Leborgne, whom Broca met on April 11, 1861. Leborgne had been hospitalized for 21 years after losing the ability to speak. Though he could understand everything said to him, he could only produce a single syllable: "tan". Hospital staff and Broca himself referred to him as "Tan".
When Leborgne died on April 17, 1861, just days after their meeting, Broca performed an autopsy. He discovered a large, fluid-filled lesion in the posterior inferior frontal gyrus—a specific fold on the surface of the brain's left frontal lobe. Broca presented his findings the very next day, proposing that this specific area was the location of articulated language. This was the first time a specific cognitive function was convincingly linked to a precise anatomical location in the brain.
A second brain confirms the first
A few months later, Broca encountered another patient, an 84-year-old man named Lazare Lelong. Lelong's situation was remarkably similar. Following a stroke, he could understand language but was only able to speak five words: "oui" (yes), "non" (no), "toujours" (always), "tois" (a mispronunciation of three), and "Lelo" (a mispronunciation of his own name). When Lelong died, his autopsy revealed a lesion in the exact same area of the left frontal lobe as Leborgne's.
The two brains provided powerful evidence for the location of brain function, challenging the then-dominant idea that the brain worked as a whole. The condition is now known as Broca's aphasia, or expressive aphasia, and the critical speech-production region of the brain is universally called Broca's area. The specimens themselves, having been preserved by Broca, became important objects in the history of neuroscience. Modern high-resolution MRI scans performed on the preserved brains in 2007 confirmed the lesions and showed they were even more extensive than Broca could have known, reaching into deeper brain structures.
💡Fun Facts
Besides "tan," Louis Victor Leborgne could also utter a curse, "Sacré nom de Dieu!" (Goddammit!), when he became frustrated.
The term for Leborgne's condition, "aphasia," was actually coined by another physician, Armand Trousseau; Broca originally called it "aphemia."
Paul Broca's own brain was preserved after his death in 1880 and is held in the collections of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.
High-resolution MRI scans of the brains revealed that Leborgne's lesion also affected the insula and basal ganglia, while Lelong's was more confined to the surface area Broca identified.
The brains are part of the medical collections of Sorbonne University. They were formerly displayed at the Musée Dupuytren, which closed to the public in 2016. The collection is now housed on the Jussieu campus and is accessible only to students and researchers by appointment, with occasional events for the public.
