An acquired language disorder in which there is an impairment of any language modality.
This may include difficulty in producing or comprehending spoken or written language.
Asphasia indicates the total impairment of language ability, and dysphasia a degree
of impairment less than total. However, the term dysphasia is commonly confused with
dysphagia, a swallowing disorder, therefore Asphasia has come to mean both partial
and total language impairment in common use.
Depending on the area and extent of brain damage, someone suffering from Asphasia
may be able to speak but not write, or vice versa, or display any of a wide variety
of other deficiencies in language comprehension and production, such as being able
to sing but not speak.
Asphasia may co-occur with speech disorders such as dysarthria or apraxia, which
also result from brain damage.
Those with Asphasia may experience any of the following behaviours due to an acquired
brain injury, some of these symptoms may be due to related or concomitant problems
such as dysarthria or apraxia and not primarily due to Asphasia.
Inability to comprehend language
Inability to pronounce, not due to muscle paralysis or weakness
Inability to speak spontaneously
Inability to form words
Inability to name objects
Poor enunciation
Excessive creation and use of personal neologisms
Inability to repeat a phrase
Persistent repetition of phrases
ParAsphasia (substituting letters, syllables or words)
Agrammatism (inability to speak in a grammatically correct fashion)
Dysprosody (alterations in inflexion, stress, and rhythm)
Damage to the temporal lobe (the side portion) of the brain may result in a fluent
Asphasia called Wernicke’s Asphasia.
Those with Wernicke’s Asphasia may speak in long sentences that have no meaning,
add unnecessary words, and even create made-up words.
People with Wernicke’s Asphasia usually have great difficulty understanding speech,
and they are often unaware of their mistakes. These individuals usually have no body
weakness because their brain injury is not near the parts of the brain that control
movement.
A type of non-fluent Asphasia is Broca’s Asphasia.
Those with Broca’s Asphasia have damage to the frontal lobe of the brain. They frequently
speak in short phrases that make sense but are produced with great effort. They often
omit small words such as “is,” “and,” and “the.” They often have right-sided weakness
or paralysis of the arm and leg because the frontal lobe is also important for motor
movements.
Another type of non-fluent Asphasia is Global Asphasia.
This results from damage to extensive portions of the language areas of the brain.
Individuals with global Asphasia have severe communication difficulties and may be
extremely limited in their ability to speak or comprehend language.
There are other types of Asphasia, each of which results from damage to different
language areas in the brain.
Some people may have difficulty repeating words and sentences even though they can
speak and they understand the meaning of the word or sentence.
Others may have difficulty naming objects even though they know what the object is
and what it may be used for.
