Bilingual Aphasia with Parallel Recovery Essay

Aphasia is a communication disorder that affects many adults and families. Aphasia occurs as a result of damage to the language-specific areas of the brain (ASHA, 2014). Individuals with aphasia may experience difficulties with oral language, receptive language, memory, attention writing, and reading. There are a myriad of approaches designed for the treatment of aphasia. Two treatment approaches, Promoting Aphasics Communicative Effectiveness (P.A.C.E.) and Constraint Induced Language Therapy (C.I.L.T.), and their efficacy in regard to available evidence will be discussed below.

This trend was also prevalent in the right hemisphere for bilinguals however not seen in monolinguals (x = 56, y = -53, z = 42; Z-score = 3.4; P<0.001). Voxel-based morphometry revealed that overall proficiency correlated negatively with age of acquisition (P<0.01; r=-0.855) and second-language proficiency correlated with grey-matter density in exactly the same left inferior parietal region previously identified by a different study (x = -48, y = -59, z = 46; Z-score = 4.1; P<0.05). (Mechelli, 2004)

Having the ability to speak more than one language influences one’ life deeply. Speaking two or more languages can affect someone from being infants to old age. Bhattacharjee continues with, “The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there

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

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) accounts for approximately 30% of all injury-related deaths each year in the U.S. (CDC 2015). Survivors experience a range of disabilities that depend on the location and severity of the lesion, including language impairments referred to as Aphasia. Aphasia does not affect a person’s actual intelligence, however, aphasia will affect a person’s ability to use words and to understand others. Aphasia can affect someone’s ability to speak and comprehend, as well as other abilities from the language part of the brain such as reading and writing. The incidence of aphasia is an estimated 80,000 new cases in the U.S per year, and the prevalence of aphasia is approximately 1 million

Knowing more than one language has been shown to increase brain size and connectivity. Bilingual adults have denser grey matter, which is brain tissue that contains information processing nerve cells and fibers. The denser grey matter was most prominent in the left hemisphere where most language and communication skills are stored (The Bilingual Brain). In a Swedish study, conducted by researchers at Lund University, military recruits were taught a new language. Recruits at the

SPLP 634 - Aphasia. Aphasia is a major course in the curriculum with emphasis on acquired communication disorders, including the etiologies, characteristics, anatomical/physiological, acoustic, psychological, developmental, and linguistic and cultural correlates. Aphasia is a graduate-level seminar-based course directed toward the study of acquired neurogenic language and cognitive disorders due to lesions of the central and peripheral nervous systems. Four major neurogenic disorders are addressed including: the aphasias, right hemisphere syndrome, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and dementia. An introduction to the language found in neurogenic psychopathology are also discussed. Etiological factors that affect varied cultural groups (e.g.,

A third type of aphasia, global aphasia, results from damage to extensive portions of the language areas of the brain. “Individuals with global aphasia have severe communication difficulties and may be extremely limited in their ability to speak or comprehend language”. ()

Many parents and teachers, now more than ever, are teaching children the importance of understanding and speaking more than one language. However, many children who speak more than one language have slight developmental delays in their syntax for both languages. However, the benefits of being bilingual far outweighs these very minor delays. There are many benefits to being bilingual. Recent studies done have even discovered that being bilingual may help protect our brains from developing diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Those of us who learned a second language during childhood have a better understanding for how language is structured and used, this understanding is called metalinguistic insight.

Finally, bilingualism offers a means of averting the natural decline of cognitive function and enhancing brain function during aging. This is due to keeping the cognitive mechanisms sharp and replacing damaged brain networks during aging. Researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients with Alzheimer. The brains of “bilingual people showed a significantly higher degree of physical atrophy in regions commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease” (Marian and Shook, 2012, p. 1). This suggests that the use of two languages protects bilinguals from the symptoms of the disease. Bilingualism itself does not directly affect Alzheimer’s disease, but the use of two languages provides a level of cognitive reserve, which enables

This investigation discusses the question of “Is the brain organized differently in bilingual individuals?”. This question was brought upon living in a bilingual community at school, with both Arabic and English speakers. This essay will demonstrate the brain imaging techniques used to differentiate the monolingual brain from a bilingual brain, research studies, and the positive and negative outcomes toward a bilingual brain. Language constructs our relationship with the world arounds us in the ways we express ourselves, therefore what does it mean to be bilingual and monolingual? Bilingualism refers to an individual’s ability to speak two or more languages fluently even if one language is learned later on in life. However, monolinguals are

No matter where you are in the world, you are taught about language. Whether it’s in your home learning your language or in school trying to learn a foreign language. Although while learning language the notion is never really thought about or brought up that the language and way we speak can influence the way we think and interact. Phycologist and neuroscientist alike have spent years, with multiple different tests to see if there is a connection between the various languages that are spoken and the way people not only think but also how they go about their daily lives. She writes to not only her colleagues and neuroscientists but also to anyone in the general public that is genuinely interested in the connection between

The purpose of this paper is to pursue one important and fundamental aim: language and the brain are purely inseparable since it allows us to perform essential tasks such as generating, comprehending and expressing speech. With damage to the brain, individuals can no longer perform such tasks which can ultimately lead to many types of language disorders. The focus of this paper is Broca’s aphasia, a language disorder characterized by the inability to produce written and spoken speech. Damage to the brain can cause many types of speech impairments as well as comprehension deficits.

Learning a second language at a young age has long-term benefits that can be felt even in old age. As human’s age their brains atrophy, but bilingual people can delay the consequences of this damage. These individuals are constantly experiencing the world using two languages so, while a monolingual person remembers how to ride a bike in one language, a bilingual person stores that memory twice, once in their first language a once in their second. This allows bilingual

There are more than 6500 language around the world. We cannot control or decide where we are going to be born or we cannot decide our mother language. But we can choose which language we are going to use as our second language. The existence of large numbers of people who speak more than one language but who do not exhibit native-like control in both languages raises the question of how proficient a person must be to be classed as bilingual. Bilingualism may be defined as having some ability to use two or even more languages. Being of bilingual has practical benefits in globalize world and it is not limited to having conversations with more people around. In 1922 the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language mean