Communication Disorders: Inside Aphasia

Expressive (motor) Aphasia is a neurological condition that occurs when words cannot be formed, expressed, or may be absent due to an injury to the cerebral cortex. (Brooks & Brooks, 2012).

It is still not fully understood whether or not the action of certain tasks is actually dependant on both of the brain hemispheres, because they both appear to have control over some tasks. An example of this, is the left hemisphere which is said to be responsible for the analytic part of the tasks, such as reading and making calculations. Within many individuals, it is also the dominant centre of language

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.

The parietal lobe of the brain if affected by dementia affects language skills. This means that communication skills could be reduced. The person may not be able to ‘find’ the appropriate words to use, or may not understand questions asked of them. They may not relate ‘words’ to the correct ‘objects’ for instance if they pick up a cup, but call it a ‘pot’.

Aphasia is a language disorder that can be the result of a brain injury. An individual that is suffering from aphasia may experience difficulty speaking, writing, reading, or comprehending. There are three different types of Aphasia that differ in various ways. First, Wernicke’s Aphasia is the inability to grasp the meaning of words and sentences that have been produced by another individual. This type of aphasia is also known as “fluent aphasia” or “receptive aphasia”. Wernicke patients’ speech may come across like a jumble of words or jargon, but it is very well articulated and they have no issue producing their own connected speech. If the patient is consecutively making errors, it is common for them to be unaware of their difficulties, and not realize that their sentences don’t make sense. The severity of the disorder varies depending on the patient, and the disorder results form damage in the left posterior temporal region of the brain, which is also known as Wernicke’s area.

Nearly one million individuals within the United States experience aphasia resulting from a stroke. The website for the American Heart Association states that strokes are the third leading cause of death in the United States. They are often referred to as a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). This occurs when the blood flow to the brain has been either stopped or interrupted. The deprivation of blood flow and oxygen to the brain results in a stroke. Around 41.2 percent of individuals who suffered from a stroke will have aphasia (Guyomard et al., 2009). Manasco (2014) stated that aphasia is a deficit in language abilities resulting from the brain. It is broken down into, two categories fluent and non-fluent. Individuals with aphasia typically suffer from anomia. This is a condition where word retrieval (anomia) is difficult. “Most unimpaired individuals do not need to put forth any effort to express themselves verbally. However,

•Aphasia is the failure to impart successfully. The loss of capacity to talk and compose is called expressive aphasia. An individual may overlook words he has learned, and will have expanding trouble with correspondence. With responsive aphasia, an individual may be not able comprehend

This section describes a type of dementia known as frontotemporal dementia, which has different forms including behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia, progressive non-fluent aphasia and semantic dementia.

Expressive aphasia is the loss of ability to convey one’s thoughts through speech or writing. A patient with expressive aphasia knows what they want to say but have trouble finding the words that is needed to state what they mean. Some of the symptoms that is shown by a person with expressive aphasia are slow speech, spelling or grammatical errors, have trouble getting certain

Human beings occasionally suffer bad damage to particular parts of their brains. Unfortunately, these injuries may lead to major failure of speech production, understanding language and comprehension which most of the patients suffer it permanently. This impairment is called Aphasia. Gayle (2012) states that people with aphasia fail to understand sentence comprehension although it is a simple sentence. She also mentioned that aphasia patients also have difficulty in reading and understanding speeches. According to Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams (2011), aphasia is a scientific term used to explained language disorder due to brain injuries caused by diseases or trauma. In other words, aphasia involves partial or total loss of the ability to

(2) Progressive non-fluent aphasia (PNFA) is characterised by problems with speech production. Individuals may struggle to find the correct words when engaging in conversation. Often individuals will struggle to pronounce words correctly (especially if they have more than two syllables), and their speech will lack appropriate grammar. Problems understanding speech can also be present, especially if the sentence contains complex grammar.

Speech and language disorders can be acquired from brain injury and external force. According to the mechanistic model of aging, the brain is seen as our hard drive (Rysberg 2016). Information is stored and signals are sent to the rest of the body. Any interference such as a stroke can alter the way a person functions. Speech Language Pathologists often come in when traumatic brain injury is seen in a patient. The brain is separated into two hemispheres; one processes language and reasoning while the other, the right side, houses the emotional aspect of communication. While someone possessing a traumatic brain injury to the right side of the brain may not exhibit problems with their articulators and Nero motor connectors, they may have problems

Uncontrolled profanity is found in many neurolinguistics disorders, the most famous is Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS). GTS, which was first identified by Itard and Gilles de la Tourette in the 1800s, is a hyperkinetic motor speech disorder characterized by frequent involuntary “tics,” which are sudden pattern-like movements or sounds. Though it is lesser known than Tourette syndrome, aphasia can also heavily feature profanity. Aphasia is a clinical language impairment resulting from damage to the language centers of the brain, usually following a stroke, but it can also come on slowly from a slow-growing brain tumor. The exact specifics of a particular aphasia depend on the location and severity of the damage. Aphasic individuals have

Aphasia is a language disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language. For most people, these are parts of the left side (hemisphere) of the brain. Aphasia usually occurs suddenly, often as the result of a stroke or head injury, but it may also develop slowly, as in the case of a brain tumor. The disorder impairs the expression and understanding of language as well as reading and writing. “Aphasia may co-occur with speech disorders such as dysarthria or apraxia of speech, which also result from brain damage”. (Sarno 23)

As Thompson states, “A sufferer of Broca 's aphasia may understand completely the sentences of others. However, he may not be able to speak at all, or may speak in sentences that are hard to understand” (Thompson, 2013). Toivonen, a professor at Carleton University, discussed the significance of information flow in the brain using the example of reading out loud. This example illustrates the phenomenon that when an area of the information pathway is damaged, correspondingly, the message-relay can become interrupted. First and for most, the process of articulating begins with the Wernicke’s area of the brain activating when an individual accesses and interprets the lexicon, their mental dictionary. From there, the arcuate fascicles, a bundle of nerve fibres, transmits information sent from the Wernicke’s area to the Broca’s area. The Broca’s area then interprets this information and transmits articulatory information to the motor cortex. Finally, the motor cortex directs movement of the muscles to produce and pronounce speech. (Toivonen,