NEUROANATOMY
UNDERSTANDING APHASIA
Aphasia is defined as the inability to express or understand language/ speech (Language
problem). This is caused by damage in a specific area of the brain responsible for language
(expression & comprehension). For most, this area is on the left side of the brain.
CAUSES:
Stroke (common), Severe Head Injury, Brain Tumor, Progressive Neurological conditions e.g
dementia, Parkinson’s disease& Alzhiemer’s disease.
During examination, three important abilities are evaluated:
• the ability to understand a vocal or written command
• the ability to repeat a sentence
• observation of the fluency of the patient’s spontaneous speech.
*Fluency being the rate & syntax (the arrangement of words in sentences) of speech.
TYPES:
There are distinct aphasias but below are the top five;
1. Broca’s aphasia (Expressive Aphasia); patient has decreased fluency; struggles to say a few
words, meaningful or not. Language understanding is largely intact. They understand the
command to repeat a sentence but fail to do so. Sometimes, what they want to say will sound
correct in their mind but it won’t come out right.
2. Wernicke’s aphasia (Receptive Aphasia); patient doesn’t comprehend language including
the command to repeat a sentence. They don’t notice their own mistakes, and patients with
Wernicke’s aphasia lose the ability to think in words & phrases. This condition results in a
speech that is fluent, but random, made-up and meaningless.
3. Conduction aphasia; occurs due to lesion to the AF ( Arcuate Fasciculus). Patient can
understand language and produce language correctly, but can’t repeat a sentence.
4. Conception tract lesion, results in a transcortical motor (TCM) aphasia or transcortical
sensory (TCS) aphasia, respectively.
a) TCM aphasia impairs fluency, as the patient can’t think about what to say, but the patient is
still able to understand and repeat.
UNDERSTANDING APHASIA
Aphasia is defined as the inability to express or understand language/ speech (Language
problem). This is caused by damage in a specific area of the brain responsible for language
(expression & comprehension). For most, this area is on the left side of the brain.
CAUSES:
Stroke (common), Severe Head Injury, Brain Tumor, Progressive Neurological conditions e.g
dementia, Parkinson’s disease& Alzhiemer’s disease.
During examination, three important abilities are evaluated:
• the ability to understand a vocal or written command
• the ability to repeat a sentence
• observation of the fluency of the patient’s spontaneous speech.
*Fluency being the rate & syntax (the arrangement of words in sentences) of speech.
TYPES:
There are distinct aphasias but below are the top five;
1. Broca’s aphasia (Expressive Aphasia); patient has decreased fluency; struggles to say a few
words, meaningful or not. Language understanding is largely intact. They understand the
command to repeat a sentence but fail to do so. Sometimes, what they want to say will sound
correct in their mind but it won’t come out right.
2. Wernicke’s aphasia (Receptive Aphasia); patient doesn’t comprehend language including
the command to repeat a sentence. They don’t notice their own mistakes, and patients with
Wernicke’s aphasia lose the ability to think in words & phrases. This condition results in a
speech that is fluent, but random, made-up and meaningless.
3. Conduction aphasia; occurs due to lesion to the AF ( Arcuate Fasciculus). Patient can
understand language and produce language correctly, but can’t repeat a sentence.
4. Conception tract lesion, results in a transcortical motor (TCM) aphasia or transcortical
sensory (TCS) aphasia, respectively.
a) TCM aphasia impairs fluency, as the patient can’t think about what to say, but the patient is
still able to understand and repeat.
