Language Disorders: Anomic Aphasia

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.

(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.

Language is an ability that many of us take for granted in everyday life. For those with aphasia, it is a daily struggle to overcome and effective communication is a goal to strive for. Aphasia patients are able to think, perhaps as well as the average person, but they simply cannot convey their ideas or thoughts easily. The Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination is an excellent examination for the diagnosis of the presence and type of aphasia, and for the location of brain damage. The Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia has been shown to be the most comprehensive assessment of the overall patient’s strengths and weaknesses in regard to language; it also allows for physicians to predict recovery accurately. Though it is no longer as popular or applicable as newer diagnostic tests, such as the BDAE, it is still an accurate assessment for aphasia. I think this is the paradox in neurological assessment: as technological advances improve, older assessments are becoming invalidated- though they are not inaccurate assessments. New advances and knowledge are being acquired in medicine every day, therefore there is always room for improvement (Holland, 2008). One of the biggest cons to the two batteries I mentioned in this paper is the fact that they are both time consuming- for both the patient and the

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).

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 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

The languages available for this measure include English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Hindi, Finnish, and Greek.

•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

Aphasia on the other hand is a communication disorder where the person struggles to understand words and speech. Patients on an aphasia ward were caught laughing at the presidents’ speech confusing staff. This is because despite not understanding words or meanings, tone is preserved and even often enhanced in aphasiacs. (Henry Head, 1926, cited in Sacks, 1998, p.86).

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

The subjects were recruited from various aphasia support groups and clinics in Alabama and Illinois. Subjects had chronic aphasia from a single ischemic stroke in the left middle cerebral artery. They spoke English and their language abilities fell in the impaired range when administered the Token Test. Subjects were excluded if they had a history of degenerative diseases, a metabolic disorder, life-threatening illnesses, a history of severe mental illness, multiple strokes, or were pregnant. Out of the 24 eligible, 14 were randomized to the treatment group and 10 to the control group. All participants were given an explanation and goals of the CIAT program before treatment

The ability to do so is achieved through a compilation of neurons in the superior temporal gyrus within the left hemisphere of the brain, and this lesion is known as Wernicke's area. The type of aphasia associated with this area is known as Wernicke’s aphasia, which is identified as the opposite of Broca's aphasia: being that poor speech and fluent meaningless utterances are prevalent in patients with Wernicke’s aphasia. Due to damage in the brain’s Wernicke area or a fracture in within the auditory system, a patient may develop pure word deafness. This type of deafness allows patients to hear however they are unable to process the meaning of linguistic speech. Transcortical sensory aphasia is a type of disorder which links the Broca and Wernicke areas of the brain: patients with this speech problem typically can follow repetition but cannot produce meaningful speech on their own. The connecting fibers of axons that link the two lesions of the brain that cause transcortical damage are the arcuate fasciculus neurons. Another sort of aphasia is conduction, where the patient is unable to speak words through repetition but they can speak normally and understand the speech of others. Anomic aphasia is where the patient has difficulty choosing the correct word to use in order to prompt controversial exchanges: they use what is known as circumlocution and that is the

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)

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.

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.