A patient who could only say 'Tan' revealed where language lives in the brain

In 1861, Paul Broca examined a man named Louis Victor Leborgne who had lost nearly all speech except the syllable 'tan'. After Leborgne died, an autopsy found damage in a specific patch of his left frontal lobe - now called Broca's area. It became the first solid evidence that language is localized to one part of the brain, founding modern neurolinguistics.

— Paul Broca, Remarks on the Seat of the Faculty of Articulate Language, Following an Observation of Aphemia — Bulletin de la Societe Anatomique de Paris, 1861