Carl Wernicke
German neurologist and psychiatrist who described sensory aphasia
German neurologist who in 1874 described a form of aphasia with fluent but disordered speech and poor comprehension, linked to the left temporal lobe. Wernicke's aphasia is named after him.
Why this person matters
Wernicke's work complemented Broca's by linking a second language function, understanding speech, to a different part of the left hemisphere. His model, developed with Ludwig Lichtheim's classification of aphasias, treated language as the work of connected regions.
Main contributions
Sensory aphasia
In Der aphasische Symptomencomplex (1874), subtitled a psychological study on an anatomical basis, he described fluent but disordered speech with impaired understanding of speech and impaired silent reading. He linked it to lesions of the left temporal lobe.
The Wernicke-Lichtheim model
Lichtheim sorted language disorders into seven aphasias, one of them Wernicke's aphasia. Wernicke adopted this classification, which became known as the Wernicke-Lichtheim model.
Wernicke encephalopathy
An acute neurological condition caused by thiamine deficiency bears his name. Combined with Korsakoff psychosis it is called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.
Context and limits
Wernicke's aphasia is distinct from Broca's motor aphasia. His elementary symptom theory in psychiatry was generally rejected for lack of supporting evidence. Sources differ on whether he wrote the 1874 monograph while studying with Meynert; the Deutsche Biographie dates the Vienna stay to 1875. Later revisions of classical aphasia models were not reviewed for this profile.
In your introductory course
Biological bases of behaviour.Appears in biological chapters as Wernicke's area and Wernicke's aphasia, paired with Broca's area in explaining how language depends on the brain.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 3.4. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1874
He published Der aphasische Symptomencomplex.
- 1875
He studied in Vienna with Theodor Meynert, and began as first assistant at the Charité in Berlin.
- 1885
He became associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Breslau, succeeding his teacher Heinrich Neumann.
- 1904
He moved to the University of Halle to direct its psychiatric and neurological clinic.
Sources
- Deutsche Biographie, Wernicke, CarlArchive or museum. Institutional biography inspected.
- Wikipedia, Carl WernickeReference work. Reference article inspected.