Giovanni Mingazzini (1859–1929) and his opposition to Pierre Marie’s conception of motor aphasia

This article describes the contribution of Giovanni Mingazzini (1859–1929), the “Father of Italian Neurology,” in the description of the subcortical structures involved in motor aphasia and his opposition to Pierre Marie’s (1853–1940) conception of aphasia. In one of the most famous controversies in the history of neurology, the French neurologists Joseph Jules Dejerine (1849–1917), Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke (1859–1927), and Pierre Marie (1853–1940) faced each other during the three symposiums of the French Society of Neurology in 1908. The debate, which was later called “the aphasia quarrel”, focused on the subject of aphasia. In an article published in January of the same year, the Italian neurologist Giovanni Mingazzini had already explicitly challenged Pierre Marie’s conception of aphasia. Mingazzini’s contribution to the “aphasia debate” deserves to be remembered for the emphasis on the role of Broca’s area, and for his detailed description of a subcortical region representing “the crossroad of the language pathways” which, if lesioned, could cause motor aphasia.