auditory cortex, conveniently located near your ears. If it is injured or removed, you will have no awareness of sound, although you might have some reflexive reaction to it. You’ll flinch at a clap of thunder, but you won’t know why. Critical to the comprehension of speech is Wernicke’s area, located in the brain’s left hemisphere. It’s named for the German neurologist Carl Wernicke, who, in 1874, published his discovery that stroke patients with lesions in that area could still hear and speak but were unable to comprehend what was said to them.
