Acute Post-Traumatic Broca Aphasia Case Studies

Imagine a life where someone could not force words to come out of his or her mouth, even if he knew what he wanted to say. Such is the life for people who suffer from Broca’s aphasia. Broca’s aphasia is a speech disorder where the Broca’s area in the brain’s left frontal lobe malfunctions, resulting in the inability for a patient to form the necessary movements of the muscles for speech production. This type of non-verbal aphasia is often referenced as motor aphasia because of the lack of motor skills in the brain for speech production. Thousands of people suffer from this disorder, and as a result communication between these people and society is incredibly difficult. Although each person experiences Broca’s aphasia differently, there are

The effects of a stroke on the human body can be devastating; if the patient survives they can be left in a vegetative state or be left immobile with their cognitive and physical abilities forever impaired. Two of the most common impairments are Aphasia and loss of motor control. [1] This common presentation of the patient’s previous condition is not specific to a stroke, they can present in a wide range of conditions therefore the assistive devices that are used by stroke patients can be implemented in all the effected patients independent of the original cause. [2]

The book Finding My Voice with Aphasia: Walking through Aphasia by Carol M. Maloney, started as a flashback to the author’s years in high school. At first, I thought that the author wanted to highlight her youth years, and remind the reader of her past. As I continued reading, I realized that her life experiences prior to her stroke were vital to her recovery.

This treatment was applied to eight subjects with a diagnosis of Broca’s aphasia, as well as to a control group of 20 with matched ages and education levels.

A sample of spontaneous speech was obtained through the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination and by asking patients to talk about their last holiday. Speech was analyzed including number of words produced per minute, number of speech production errors per minute, length of word-finding pauses, and range of nouns and verbs used.

Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that affects a person’s ability to understand oral and written language, speaking and writing. It is estimated that one third of those who survive stroke have aphasia (Department of Health, 2007). Most patients with aphasia exhibit spontaneous recovery, usually in the first 2-3 months following stroke onset (Godecke, Hird, Lalor, Rai, & Phillips, 2012). However, 30-40% of these patients may experience long-term post-stroke aphasia (Bakheit et al., 2007). Continued rehabilitative treatments with the speech and language pathologists (SLPs) are not as significantly effective due to the current high demands on limited resources (Palmer et al., 2012), which reduced the availability of face-to-face speech

Acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) is a neurogenic motor speech disorder that results from an impaired capacity to plan or program the sensorimotor commands that direct the muscular movement and positioning necessary for phonetically and prosodically typical speech (Duffy, 2013). These clinical characteristics are not attributed to physiologic disturbances such as paralysis, paresis, or incoordination, or to the language processing disturbances that characterize aphasia. AOS is almost always the result of a disturbance in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain. Common deviant speech characteristics of AOS include a slowed rate of speech, difficulties in sound production, abnormal prosody, and disturbed fluency. The characteristics that best distinguish AOS from other motor speech disorders are distorted sound substitutions and additions, decreased phonemic accuracy with increased rate and length of utterance, attempts to self-correct articulatory errors, groping for correct articulatory postures, and greater difficulty on volitional than

After the first year of aphasia resulting from stroke, researchers believe that spontaneous recovery even with intensive therapies will be unlikely. There are few studies which have documented the results of post-stroke language functions after 12 months. Traditional language therapies also focus on utilizing compensatory communication strategies with a focus on immediate communication needs for each patient. Initial strategies used included gesturing, drawing, writing, and AAC systems with the expectation that these assistive modalities will be decreased as verbal language function improves. Scientists have begun to question if using these types of techniques could contribute to a learned non-use phenomenon. Thus, this study purposes to discover if restraining non-verbal communication in aphasia patients can result in better verbal language outcomes in the future.

This study looked at the short and long-term effects of the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) program for individuals with dysarthria resulting from a stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI). Five males and five females, with an age range of 19-80 years, and a range of post-onset of 6-144 months participated in this study. Seven suffered from a TBI and 2 experienced a stroke. The severity of dysarthria ranged from mild to moderately impaired. Nine of out the ten participants also presented with some form of cognitive impairment. All participants spoke and understood English and were stimulable to an improvement in the volume/quality of their voice. An ABAA experimental design was used to look at the effects of the LSVT on the participant’s speech

Expressive Aphasia (Broca's aphasia) is a syndrome that results from damage to anterior regions of the brain that are responsible for language. According to Kiernan, Barr, and Rajakum (2013), this disorder is located at the left posterior inferior frontal gyrus or inferior frontal operculum, also known as Broca's area (Brodmann area 45 and Brodmann area 44) (p. 244).Typical causes of expressive aphasia may include brain infection, brain tumor, or dementia such as Alzheimer's disease.

Pierre Paul Broca revolutionized our modern understanding of the imperative role neuronal lesions have in determining the functionality of an individual’s speaking abilities. Specifically, his greatest contribution relates to the locating of aphasia within the cerebral cortex, and determining which region of the brain was specialized for producing articulate speech. Eventually classified as Broca’s area (Page 75), it exists upon the left frontal lobe, and predominately functions to regulate and encourage speaking abilities. Healthy individuals typically exhibit normal electrochemical impulses during audible and unintelligible episodes of communication, but extensive traumatic brain injury or genetic abnormalities could possible result in a

An active saline soaked sponge electrode (5 cm x 7cm), 2mA anodal constant current was applied to Broca’s area daily for 20 minutes over a period of ten days (Volpato, et al., 2013). Furthermore, they were provided with ten sham sessions, which was 30 seconds of stimulation, a control condition, as if they were receiving real stimulation. At the end or beginning of each sham or tDCS treatment, the eight participants were instructed to perform a computerized naming task, where their response time and object naming accuracy was assessed (Volpato, et al., 2013). At the end of the treatment, only one participant demonstrated an improvement in object naming accuracy and response time. The authors, reported that the results of the study revealed that an off-line tDCS approach is not effective in the treatment of chronic aphasia (Volpato, et al.,

The article, “Comprehension of synthetic and digitized natural speech by adults aphasia” composed by Karen Hux, is interested in whether forms of synthetic speech aids people who are diagnosed with aphasia. People with aphasia tend to face a reading problem which is difficulty reading certain texts and have a preference towards spoken text. According to Hux, “Single word reading challenges occur in 68% to 80% of people with aphasia.” (Hux 2017). Synthetic speech, utilizes devices that use digital text and transforms this text to speech. For a person with aphasia to be capable of operating these devices, they must be able to comprehend auditory signal. However, the auditory signal of a digitalized speech will differ in pitch and speed of speech

Aphasia is a neurological disorder that has a major impact on communication; it can affect any persons at any age. Aphasia is often caused by many diseases including tumors, progressive neurological disorders, traumatic brain injury, and stroke. Cerebrovascular accidents “stroke” contributes to most cases of Aphasia. It is estimated that there is over 80,000 new cases every year due to a stroke in the United States (National Stroke Association, 2016). Cerebrovascular accidents occur when blood supply to the brain is interrupted or reduced. Once this occurs oxygen to the brain is reduced causing focal lesions. Depending on the location, these lesions will have an affect on certain language centers in the brain, including the Broca’s and Wernicke’s

Broca’s research with Legorgne (also known as Tan) was very influential and helped understand much about the part of the brain that is associated with language. When “Tan” died, Broca was able to perform an autopsy and found that he had a lesion in the left frontal lobe of the cerebral hemisphere (which is now termed Broca’s area). This discovery helped lead to the assumption that this damage was related to “Tan’s” decline in abilities. Although Broca studied other aphasiacs, “Tan” was the first and most influential. Broca’s conclusions were accepted and he was given credit because his evidence was mostly better than other researchers and the time was right for an explanation of the issue at hand.