Historical Roots of the Field of Learning Disabilities

Abstract

The field of learning disabilities is often thought of as having come into being in the early 1960s. In reality, there is a long history of scientific investigation into psycho-anatomic functions. This article highlights the scientific contributions of some major nineteenth-century German researchers, their astounding attempts at describing neuropsychologic dysfunction, and their struggle to conceptionalize and cerebrally localize the clinical syndromes they had observed. After Pierre Paul Broca's discovery of “motor aphasia,” Carl Wernicke described the clinical syndrome of “sensory aphasia” and its cerebral localization in 1871. Wernicke's investigation was at the onset of rapidly accumulating insights into the complexities of neuropsychologic functions as they were investigated by researchers such as Ludwig Lichtheim, Hugo Karl Liepmann, B. Berlin, Hubert Grashey, and J. K. Goldscheider. The long-term influence of this research on the development of the field of learning disabilities is discussed.