Walter Moxon and his thoughts about language and the brain

Walter Moxon wrote a well-timed paper in 1866 on aphemia with accompanying right sided hemiplegia. Like many other investigators of this apparent lopsidedness of the articulatory system for human speech. Moxon had to reconcile left hemisphere specialization for this function with the overriding law of symmetry, which for a large sector of the scientific community was a sine qua non of the anatomy and function of high level animal cognition. His reasoning was essentially that since the right dominant hand (and hence the left hemisphere) in some sense led overall bilateral limb movement patterns, that the right side of the tongue would lead whole tongue movement for articulation, the left side following in some mechanical sense. Thus, Moxon could link left hemisphere dominance for handedness as well as for speech. His theory was that "attention" was focused on the left hemisphere during limb movement development, under his assumption that the articulators were limbs as well as the arms and hands. The present paper will examine the professional life of Moxon and his 1866 paper, as well as the scant commentary that it has elicited in the literature on the history of left hemisphere dominance for the human articulatory function.     

Walter Moxon and His Thoughts About Language and the Brain

Walter Moxon wrote a well-timed paper in 1866 on aphemia with accompanying right sided hemiplegia. Like many other investigators of this apparent lopsidedness of the articulatory system for human speech, Moxon had to reconcile left hemisphere specialization for this function with the overriding law of symmetry, which for a large sector of the scientific community was a sine qua non of the anatomy and function of high level animal cognition. His reasoning was essentially that since the right dominant hand (and hence the left hemisphere) in some sense led overall bilateral limb movement patterns, that the right side of the tongue would lead whole tongue movement for articulation, the left side following in some mechanical sense. Thus, Moxon could link left hemisphere dominance for handedness as well as for speech. His theory was that “attention” was focused on the left hemisphere during limb movement development, under his assumption that the articulators were limbs as well as the arms and hands. The present paper will examine the professional life of Moxon and his 1866 paper, as well as the scant commentary that it has elicited in the literature on the history of left hemisphere dominance for the human articulatory function.     

Hermann Oppenheim's observations about music in aphasia

Hermann Oppenheim was influential in many areas of neurology, but his ideas about music are relatively unknown. In 1888, he published a paper that outlined how the assessment of music skills in patients with aphasia could lead to a better understanding of aphasia and language. Oppenheim conducted the first comprehensive music assessment as part of a neurologic examination and presented the first case series of music in aphasia. His paper was widely cited and had significant influence over the next 30 years. Although largely unrecognized as such, Oppenheim was an important historical figure in the study of music and neurology.     

Patient Tan revisited: a case of atypical global aphasia?

Broca's first patient presented in support of a relationship between a lesion of the frontal lobe and aphasia was patient Tan. Although Pierre Marie refers to this case as "indisputably aphasia of Broca," the clinical diagnosis of Tan's aphasia has not been re-examined in light of current clinical criteria. Superficially, the patient's extremely limited verbal output and intact comprehension appear to fit with the diagnosis of Broca's aphasia, but a more thorough examination of the onset, evolution and nature of the patient's speech symptoms suggests alternate interpretations. Contemporary evidence in support of a robust relationship between stereotypical utterances and Global aphasia suggests that patient Tan may have suffered from a Global rather than Broca's aphasia.     

Localization of Language Function in the Twentieth Century

In the twentieth century the method of identifying pathology in patients with aphasia has fluctuated between localizing and holistic theories. The practical localization of sensation and voluntary movement became a clinical commonplace in the beginning of the century, but the mental component of aphasia made its localization controversial. In Paris before the war, Pierre Marie made the localization of aphasia the centerpiece of his personal feud with Jules Dejerine. After the war Konstantin von Monakow used the phenomenon of recovery from aphasia to support his holistic views of localization. Henry Head, in a 1926 study that remains influential today, took a neo-Jacksonian approach to localization and the physiology of language. Kurt Goldstein led the postwar anti-localizationists, asserting that physicians must look after the whole person and that brain function was inherently unified. Norman Geschwind reflected 1960s physiological thought in analyzing aphasia as a type of disconnection of distinct functional areas. In the twenty-first century the localization of aphasia remains dependent on theory, with competition between holistic and localizing ideas.     

Authors’ Response

Broca’s first patient presented in support of a relationship between a lesion of the frontal lobe and aphasia was patient Tan. Although Pierre Marie refers to this case as “indisputably aphasia of Broca,’” the clinical diagnosis of Tan’s aphasia has not been re-examined in light of current clinical criteria. Superficially, the patient’s extremely limited verbal output and intact comprehension appear to fit with the diagnosis of Broca’s aphasia, but a more thorough examination of the onset, evolution and nature of the patient’s speech symptoms suggests alternate interpretations. Contemporary evidence in support of a robust relationship between stereotypical utterances and Global aphasia suggests that patient Tan may have suffered from a Global rather than Broca’s aphasia.     

Heritage management at the local level: rhetoric and results in the case of Gaziantep,Turkey

Following international trends, Turkey has recently introduced decentralisation reforms to its highly centralised public administration system. These reforms have also applied to the cultural heritage sector, where innovative laws since 2004 have allowed local administrations and private actors to play new entrepreneurial roles. The Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality has been a pioneer in this process, promoting policies that promote cultural tourism as an engine of economic growth. Under its leadership, hundreds of historic buildings have been restored, nine new museums and heritage sites opened, and museum visitors increased tenfold. These positive results make Gaziantep an interesting case of successful decentralisation in heritage management. Despite these successes, however, the disconnection between rhetoric and results, and the fragmentation and ambiguity of responsibilities emerging from the decentralisation process raises serious questions about its sustainability and replicability.     

Broca’s faculté du langage articulé: Language or Praxis?

De Oliveira-Souza, Moll, and Tovar-Moll (this issue) historically reevaluate that Paul Broca’s aphemia should be considered as a kind of apraxia rather than aphasia. I argue that such a claim is unwarranted, given the interpretation of the faculty of speech Broca derived from his predecessors, Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud and Franz Joseph Gall, and also with a view on the then generally held opinion that the terms aphémie and aphasie were synonyms. I will discuss evidence that patients such as Leborgne, producing only very few words or syllables, suffer from a global aphasia, affecting all modalities, despite Broca’s statement that Leborgne’s comprehension was intact. I also point to Broca’s claim that the faculty of speech, located in the left anterior hemisphere, is independent from hand preference because it is an intellectual and not a motor function, and to his statement that the cerebral convolutions are not motor organs. I finally contend that, in order to determine whether a given language problem should be labeled as aphasia or apraxia, it is crucial to first be clear on the components of old and new models of language production.     

Cape Rock Lobster (Jasus lalandii) Remains from South African West Coast Shell Middens: Preservational Factors and Possible Bias

Cape rock lobster (Jasus lalandii) remains in South African west coast shell middens are represented by calcareous mandibles, and by fragments of exoskeleton when preservation is good. Quantification of MNIs and observations on ody size of Cape rock lobsters have been based on counts and measurements on the surviving mandibles. Little is known of the importance of this resource in precolonial hunter-gatherer subsistence, and even less is known about the possible preservational bias affecting the recovery of representative quantitative data from Cape rock lobster mandibles. The latter problem is crucial to resolve in order to understand issues about coastal hunter-gatherer subsistence. Left and right mandibles are not exact mirror images of each other, with left mandibles being consistently larger and thicker than the right mandibles. Moreover, small mandibles measuring between 4·5 and 7·5 mm are much thinner and delicate than large specimens. Due to their small size, however, small mandibles can escape attrition by falling within protective spaces, such as those created under large whole shells. In order to ascertain whether or not left mandibles survive in larger number than right ones, and whether or not smaller mandibles (left and right) break more frequently than larger ones, we conducted basic statistical procedures with quantitative data (frequency and mean size of mandibles) from a variety of depositional contexts. The results show that left and right mandibles break with the same frequency, and that breakage does not bias measurements of mandibles towards the larger or smaller end of the size range. Similar studies will need to be conducted when recovering Cape rock lobster mandibles from depositional contexts different to the ones encountered in the study area.     

The three last years of Manuel II Palaeologus' reign between two stroke attacks: aphasia or not?

The authors attempt to solve the enigma about the possible aphasia of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1391-1425) in the 3-year period between his first and his second and fatal stroke. The texts of historians and chroniclers reveal that Manuel remained semi-paralyzed at bed and his motor disability alienated him from the state affairs and condemned him to isolation from all embassies and contact with others, except his family. Only the funeral oration of the Bishop Bessarion raises the suspicion of a speechless emperor. All testimonies referring to this infirmity are examined.     

The man behind the syndrome: Sigvald Refsum

The authors attempt to solve the enigma about the possible aphasia of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1391–1425) in the 3-year period between his first and his second and fatal stroke. The texts of historians and chroniclers reveal that Manuel remained semi-paralyzed at bed and his motor disability alienated him from the state affairs and condemned him to isolation from all embassies and contact with others, except his family. Only the funeral oration of the Bishop Bessarion raises the suspicion of a speechless emperor. All testimonies referring to this infirmity are examined.     

Heritage conservation and advocacy coalitions: the state-society conflict in the case of the Enning Road redevelopment project in Guangzhou

The Enning Road redevelopment project has been controversial in Guangzhou as the site possesses many vernacular buildings that are not officially recognised by the authorities as significant but are nevertheless highly regarded by non-state stakeholders as important entities that embody the unique essence and culture of local neighbourhoods. This paper examines the positive role led by the press media, the New Express, in bringing about changes in the government-sanctioned Enning Road redevelopment project plan through the lens of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). The significance of this paper lies in detailing how the news group has helped shift the project priority from being property-led to conservation-led. Its reports have gained a wide audience in appreciating and recognising the conservation value of non-designated vernacular architecture in inner city areas. Nonetheless, this paper raises question about the sustainability of civil mobilisation in subsequent conservation efforts, due to a general lack of enthusiasm. Neither urban redevelopment strategies nor conservation agenda have been subject to a major overhaul due to the impact of this individual redevelopment project. Therefore, the promise of change is at best a tactical compromise adopted by the municipal authorities to nullify opposing public voices in Guangzhou.     

Seventeenth-century legal fictions: the case of John Perry

This essay discusses the role of narrative in the transmission of legal “truth” in the early modern period, taking as its focus the John Perry murder case of 1660. Perry, a servant, confessed to and was convicted of the murder of his missing master, William Harrison, in the village of Campden in Gloucestershire. Two years after Perry’s execution, however, Harrison reappeared, offering in explanation of his absence a lurid and incredible account of his kidnap and transport to the slave markets of Turkey. In the Perry case complex and unstable narratives, with debts to a range of literary genres, served to obscure the central question of a missing body. This narrativisation of circumstance gained further momentum once the affair began to circulate in textual form, when, I will contend, it became not only a legal story but a way of telling stories about the law. In particular, the case raises questions of methodology: where can we, as scholars, locate truth within the ambiguities of law in this period, and is that truth really of value in our consideration of early modern legal and literary texts?     

Encounters and (in)tolerance: perceptions of legality and the regulation of space

Modern western societies are becoming increasingly diverse, undergoing rapid demographic change as a product of new patterns of migration driven by processes of globalization. As populations and cultures have become more heterogeneous in this way, public space has been increasingly defined as a space of encounter. The growing focus on the significance of everyday contact with difference raises questions about the frameworks within which such encounters occur and, specifically, the extent to which incidental encounters are shaped or regulated by perceptions of formal obligations to comply with legislative frameworks, or informal expectations about appropriate ways of behaving in public space. Using original empirical data about what ordinary people think about equality laws, the paper contributes to social geographies by considering the spatial sensitivities and regulatory frameworks that shape encounters with difference.     

Can Christian Democracy Be America's Next European Import?

The confluence of the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision on gay marriage and the unusual nature of the 2016 U.S. presidential election presents American Christians with significant political questions. Obergefell's elevation of gay marriage to the status of a constitutional civil right put U.S. law and Christian orthdoxy at loggerheads, thereby raising serious issues with regard to the continued ability of religious organizations to participate in the not-for-profit sector and in higher education. At the same time, the nationalistic turn of the the Republican party under Donald Trump generated dissonance with Christian views of human solidarity. The new situation seems to shift the landscape of American politics and raises the possibility of new alternatives. Contributors to this symposium were asked to evaluate the prospects for an Americanized version of European Christian Democracy. While they generated a diversity of opinion about Christian Democracy, the group pragmatically recognized the many obstacles in place. Some argued against the idea because of reservations about associating the Christian faith with the coerciveness of law. Others noted the proven virtues of such parties in Europe. This article interacts with the different responses and makes a case for why Christian Democracy might have a brighter future in the U.S. than many believe. The primary reason is that Christian Democracy emerged in response to aggressive secularism in Europe's past that may only be reaching similar levels in the U.S. today. Therefore, a new political movement with similarities to Christian Democracy might make sense in the American context.     

Teaching about political violence: a primer on representation

Geography is not generally viewed as a ‘source’ discipline for political violence studies, but this paper begins with the presumption that geography is well disposed to teach courses on the subject. The key purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that engaging issues of political violence is useful for our pedagogy. In particular, teaching about political violence allows geography to address concerns arising from the ‘crisis of representation’. It does so in two ways. First, it provides another venue for teaching about the ‘the other’ and ‘othered places’ in our curricula. Second, it also allows geography to challenge uncritical tropes about political violence as emerging from some peoples and places and not others. As a case study this paper overviews a course entitled Militia Movements in Comparative Perspective. This course was organized around a theoretical unit and four case study units. The case conflicts were chosen to represent conflicts that crossed ideological (right/left) and geographical (Global North/Global South) divides. The course structure is overviewed and a classroom discussion that highlighted questions about representation is described and analysed. The paper concludes by reviewing current efforts to address violence in the discipline, noting problems with these efforts, and suggesting alternatives to them.     

Extreme right parties in Western Europe: the case of the Italian Northern League

Abstract

This article argues that voters of the Italian Lega Nord have been radicalized in recent years, shifting from an intermediate ‘centrist’ position to the extreme right. Data from both national and European mass surveys (e.g. Italian National Election Studies and European Electoral Studies) provide additional support for this shift from left to right and the accompanying changes in criteria (i.e. immigration, democracy, civil rights, European integration, and politics), indicating that Lega Nord voters have evolved into a body that fits the new extreme-right concept well.     

Site exploitation territories and topography: Two case studies from palaeolithic spain

Several methods of relating on-site and off-site data for developing and testing hypotheses about man-environment relationships and prehistoric subsistence economies have been devised since the original proposal for site-catchment analysis in 1970. We review the principles involved in these methods, and emphasize the importance of distinguishing clearly between Site Catchments (SCs) and Site Exploitation Territories (SETs). We propose that the distorting effects of variable topography have crucial importance in understanding the tactical reasons for using particular sites in regional exploitation strategies and demonstrate a simple technique for calculating this distortion. Two case studies from the Upper Palaeolithic of Spain show the potential of the technique. One focuses on the relationships between site clusters, the other explores the relationships between sites within site clusters.     

On the Use of the Term ‘Non-Anglo Archaeologists’

Many universities in India teach in both English and Hindi to separate classes—the students have an option to choose their language of instruction. Thus the claim of non-Anglo archaeologists as being co-opted raises the double question of being co-opted by whom and for what purpose? If it is the case that there are co-opted third and fourth world archaeologists, then who is to blame and how may this situation be rectified. I feel every-one has the answer to this question and nothing more needs be said about it. My sympathies rest with the co-opted.