Aphasia

Not to be confused with aphakia, aphagia, or aphantasia.
For other uses, see Aphasia (disambiguation).
Aphasia
Regions of the left hemisphere that can give rise to aphasia when damaged[1]
Pronunciation
SpecialtyNeurology, Psychiatry
TreatmentASL & Speech therapy

In aphasia (sometimes called dysphasia),[a] a person may be unable to comprehend or unable to formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions.[2] The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine, but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in the Global North.[3] Aphasia can also be the result of brain tumors, epilepsy, autoimmune neurological diseases,[4] brain infections,[5] or neurodegenerative diseases (such as dementias).[6][7]

To be diagnosed with aphasia, a person's language must be significantly impaired in one (or more) of the four aspects of communication. Alternatively, in the case of progressive aphasia, it must have significantly declined over a short period of time. The four aspects of communication are spoken language production and comprehension and written language production and comprehension; impairments in any of these aspects can impact on functional communication.

The difficulties of people with aphasia can range from occasional trouble finding words, to losing the ability to speak, read, or write; intelligence, however, is unaffected.[7] Expressive language and receptive language can both be affected as well. Aphasia also affects visual language such as sign language.[2] In contrast, the use of formulaic expressions in everyday communication is often preserved.[8] For example, while a person with aphasia, particularly expressive aphasia (Broca's aphasia), may not be able to ask a loved one when their birthday is, they may still be able to sing "Happy Birthday". One prevalent deficit in all aphasias is anomia, which is a difficulty in finding the correct word.[9]: 72 

With aphasia, one or more modes of communication in the brain have been damaged and are therefore functioning incorrectly. Aphasia is not caused by damage to the brain resulting in motor or sensory deficits, thus producing abnormal speech — that is, aphasia is not related to the mechanics of speech, but rather the individual's language cognition. However, it is possible for a person to have both problems, e.g. in the case of a hemorrhage damaging a large area of the brain. An individual's language abilities incorporate the socially shared set of rules, as well as the thought processes that go behind communication (as it affects both verbal and nonverbal language). Aphasia is not a result of other peripheral motor or sensory difficulty, such as paralysis affecting the speech muscles, or a general hearing impairment.[citation needed]

Neurodevelopmental forms of auditory processing disorder are differentiable from aphasia in that aphasia is by definition caused by acquired brain injury, but acquired epileptic aphasia has been viewed as a form of APD.

  1. ^ Henseler I, Regenbrecht F, Obrig H (March 2014). "Lesion correlates of patholinguistic profiles in chronic aphasia: comparisons of syndrome-, modality- and symptom-level assessment". Brain. 137 (Pt 3): 918–930. doi:10.1093/brain/awt374. PMID 24525451.
  2. ^ a b Damasio AR (February 1992). "Aphasia". The New England Journal of Medicine. 326 (8): 531–539. doi:10.1056/NEJM199202203260806. PMID 1732792.
  3. ^ Code, Chris; Petheram, Brian (2011-02-01). "Delivering for aphasia". International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 13 (1): 3–10. doi:10.3109/17549507.2010.520090. ISSN 1754-9507. PMID 21329405. S2CID 44461150.
  4. ^ Rook, Janine; Llufriu, Sara; de Kok, Dörte; Rofes, Adrià (November 2023). "Language impairments in people with autoimmune neurological diseases: A scoping review". Journal of Communication Disorders. 106: 106368. doi:10.1016/j.jcomdis.2023.106368. PMID 37717472.
  5. ^ Rofes, Adrià; van de Beek, Diederik; Miceli, Gabriele (3 October 2022). "Language impairments and CNS infections: a review". Aphasiology. 36 (10): 1206–1248. doi:10.1080/02687038.2021.1937922.
  6. ^ "An overview of aphasia". WebMD.
  7. ^ a b "American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA): Aphasia". asha.org.
  8. ^ Stahl B, Van Lancker Sidtis D (2015). "Tapping into neural resources of communication: formulaic language in aphasia therapy". Frontiers in Psychology. 6 (1526): 1526. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01526. PMC 4611089. PMID 26539131.
  9. ^ Manasco MH (2014). Introduction to Neurogenic Communication Disorders. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. ISBN 978-1-4496-5244-9.


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