What Kind of Aphaisa Do you Have? (Quick Find)


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Aphasia as defined by the American Heart Assoication's website:

 

Aphasia is a total or partial loss of the ability to use words. It may be caused by brain injury or disease. It's most often caused by a stroke that injures the brain's language center. Some people with aphasia recover quickly and completely after a stroke. Others may have permanent speech and language problems.

 

* Speech problems can range from trouble finding words to being unable to talk at all.

Some people have problems understanding what others are saying or have trouble with reading, writing or math.

* In other cases, a person with aphasia may have trouble talking but can understand what others say perfectly.

* Each person's speech and language problem is unique. A language professional (speech therapist) can help set up a treatment plan and help others understand the needs of a person with aphasia.

 

 

 

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Below is part of an article that was found at National Aphasia Association website. It defines the varieties types of stroke related speech issues.

 

 

Varieties and special features of aphasia

 

Over a century of experience with the study of aphasia has taught us that particular components of language may be particularly damaged in some individuals. We have also learned to recognize different types or patterns of aphasia that correspond to the location of the brain injury in the individual case. Some of the common varieties of aphasia are:

 

Global aphasia - This is the most severe form of aphasia, and is applied to patients who can produce few recognizable words and understand little or no spoken language. Global aphasics can neither read nor write. Global aphasia may often be seen immediately after the patient has suffered a stroke and it may rapidly improve if the damage has not been too extensive. However, with greater brain damage, severe and lasting disability may result.

 

Broca's aphasia - This is a form of aphasia in which speech output is severely reduced and is limited mainly to short utterances, of less than four words. Vocabulary access is limited in persons with Broca's aphasia, and their formation of sounds is often laborious and clumsy. The person may understand speech relatively well and be able to read, but be limited in writing. Broca's aphasia is often referred to as a 'non fluent aphasia' because of the halting and effortful quality of speech.

 

Mixed non-fluent aphasia - This term is applied to patients who have sparse and effortful speech, resembling severe Broca's aphasia. However, unlike persons with Broca's aphasia, they remain limited in their comprehension of speech and do not read or write beyond an elementary level. Wernicke's aphasia - In this form of aphasia the ability to grasp the meaning of spoken words is chiefly impaired, while the ease of producing connected speech is not much affected. Therefore Wernicke's aphasia is referred to as a 'fluent aphasia.' However, speech is far from normal. Sentences do not hang together and irrelevant words intrude-sometimes to the point of jargon, in severe cases. Reading and writing are often severely impaired.

 

Anomic aphasia - This term is applied to persons who are left with a persistent inability to supply the words for the very things they want to talk about-particularly the significant nouns and verbs. As a result their speech, while fluent in grammatical form and output is full of vague circumlocutions and expressions of frustration. They understand speech well, and in most cases, read adequately. Difficulty finding words is as evident in writing as in speech.

 

Other varieties of aphasia In addition to the foregoing syndromes that are seen repeatedly by speech clinicians, there are many other possible combinations of deficits that do not exactly fit into these categories. Some of the components of a complex aphasia syndrome may also occur in isolation. This may be the case for disorders of reading (alexia) or disorders affecting both reading and writing (alexia and agraphia), following a stroke. Severe impairments of calculation often accompany aphasia, yet in some instances patients retain excellent calculation in spite of the loss of language.

 

Disorders that may accompany or be confused with aphasia

 

There are a variety of disorders of communication that may be due to paralysis, weakness, or incoordination of the speech musculature or to cognitive impairment. Such impairment may accompany aphasia or occur independently and be confused with aphasia. It is important to distinguish these disorders from aphasia because the treatment(s) and prognosis of each disorder are different.

 

Apraxia - Apraxiais a collective term used to describe impairment in carrying out purposeful movements. People with severe aphasia are usually extremely limited in explaining themselves by pantomime or gesture, except for expressions of emotion. Commonly they will show you something in their wallet, or lead you to show you something, but this is the extent of their non-verbal communication. Specific examination usually shows that they are unable to perform common expressive gestures on request, such as waving good-bye, beckoning, or saluting, or to pantomime drinking, brushing teeth, etc. (limb apraxia). Apraxia may also primarily affect oral, non-speech movements, like pretending to cough or blow out a candle (facial apraxia). This disorder may even extend to the inability to manipulate real objects. More often, however, apraxia is not very apparent unless one asks the patient to perform or imitate a pretended action. For this reason it is almost never presented as a complaint by the patient or the family. Nevertheless it may underlie the very limited ability of people with aphasia to compensate for the speech impairment by using informative gestures.

 

Apraxia of speech - This term is frequently used by speech pathologists to designate an impairment in the voluntary production of articulation and prosody (the rhythm and timing) of speech. It is characterized by highly inconsistent errors.

 

Dysarthria - Dysarthria refers to a group of speech disorders resulting from weakness, slowness, or incoordination of the speech mechanism due to damage to any of a variety of points in the nervous system. Dysarthria may involve disorders to some or all of the basic speech processes: respiration phonation, resonance, articulation, and prosody. Dysarthria is a disorder of speech production not language (e.g., use of vocabulary and/or grammar). Unlike apraxia of speech, the speech errors that occur in dysarthria are highly consistent from one occasion to the next.

 

Dementia - Dementia is a condition of impairment of memory, intellect, personality, and insight resulting from brain injury or disease. Some forms of dementia are progressive, such as Alzheimer's disease, Picks disease, or some forms of Parkinson's disease. Language impairments are more or less prominent in different forms of dementia, but these are usually overshadowed by more widespread intellectual loss. Since dementia is so often a progressive disorder, the prognosis is quite different from aphasia.

 

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From Wikipedia, free encyclopedia here is another definition:

 

Expressive Aphasia: Expressive aphasia is an aphasia caused by damage to Broca's area in the brain; it is also known as Broca's aphasia. For sufferers of this form of aphasia, speech is difficult to initiate, non-fluent, labored, and halting. Intonation and stress patterns are deficient. Language is reduced to disjointed words and sentence construction is poor.

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