Aphasia is a not very common problem but if it occurs it needs to be treated so that the person who suffers from this condition can have a good quality of life. In this way, we can try to ensure that people with aphasia do not have too much impaired communication, and that at least, within their possibilities allows them to communicate adequately.
aphasia
Aphasia is a language impairment that affects the production or understanding of speech and the ability to read or write. Aphasia is always due to an injury to the brain, most commonly from a stroke, especially in older people. Although anyone can have aphasia, even young children. Brain injuries that result in aphasia can also arise from head trauma, from brain tumors or infections.
Aphasia can be so severe as to make communication with the patient almost impossible, or it can be very mild. It may primarily affect a single aspect of language use, such as the ability to recall the names of objects, the ability to join words into sentences, or the ability to read.
In the vast majority of cases, are affected by aphasia in the multiple aspects that have to do with communication, while other channels seem to be intact and accessible to be able to have an exchange of information, even if it is largely a limited exchange.
A health professional will need to determine the amount of function available in each of the channels for language understanding and evaluate the possibility that treatment can improve the use of the available channels.
The 6 most common types of aphasia
Research on aphasia has been going on for more than a century, so we know what the particular components of language are and how they may be damaged in some people. To better understand what aphasia is, it is important to know what types are known to this day. The different types of aphasia that exist depend on the location of the brain injury in each individual case. Some of the common varieties of aphasia are those we mention below.
overall aphasia
This is the most severe form of aphasia and applies to people who can produce few recognizable words and understand little or no spoken language. People with global aphasia cannot read or write. As in other milder forms of aphasia, people may have completely preserved intellectual and cognitive abilities, unrelated to language and speech.
Global aphasia is caused by lesions in multiple areas of the brain related to language processing, including Wernicke's and Drill. These areas of the brain are particularly important for understanding spoken language, accessing vocabulary, using grammar, and producing words and sentences.
Global aphasia can often be seen immediately after the patient has suffered a stroke or brain trauma. Symptoms may improve quickly in the first few months after the stroke if the damage has not been too great. However, with greater brain damage, severe and long-lasting disability can result. It is important to talk to your doctor about finding speech and language therapy as soon as possible after global aphasia has been diagnosed.
drill aphasia
People with Broca's aphasia have trouble speaking fluently, but their comprehension may be relatively preserved. This type of aphasia is also known as non-fluent or expressive aphasia. People affected with this type of aphasia have difficulty producing grammatical sentences and their speech is mainly limited to short expressions of less than four words. Making the right sounds or finding the right words is often a complicated process. Some people have more difficulty using verbs than nouns.
A person with Broca's aphasia can understand speech relatively well, particularly when the grammatical structure of the spoken language is simple. However, he may have a more difficult time understanding sentences with more complex grammatical constructions. People with this type of aphasia may be able to read but be limited in writing.
Broca's aphasia is the result of a lesion in speech and in areas of the brain such as the inferior frontal gyrus of the left hemisphere, among others. Such damage is often the result of a stroke, but can also occur due to brain trauma. As in other types of aphasia, Intellectual and cognitive abilities not related to speech and language can be fully preserved.
Mixed non-fluent aphasia
Mixed non-fluent aphasia applies to people who have limited, effortful speech, which resembles more severe Broca's aphasia. However, unlike people with Broca's aphasia, with this type of aphasia, individuals are limited in their understanding of speech, similar to people with Wernicke's aphasia. They read and write at a basic level.
Wernicke's aphasia
In this form of aphasia, the ability to understand the meaning of spoken words and sentences is affected, while the ease of producing meaningful speech is not greatly affected. Therefore, Wernicke's aphasia is also known as "fluent aphasia" or "receptive aphasia."
Reading and writing are usually very impaired. As in other forms of aphasia, people may have completely preserved intellectual and cognitive abilities unrelated to speech and language. People with Wernicke's aphasia can produce many words and often speak using grammatically correct sentences with normal rhythm and prosody. However, what they say often doesn't make much sense.. They may not realize they are using the wrong words or who use a non-existent word and are often not aware that what they say does not make sense.
In Wernicke's aphasia, affected people may have damage to areas of the brain that are important for processing the meaning of words and spoken language. This damage includes the posterior temporal regions of the brain, which are part of what is known as Wernicke's area, hence the name aphasia.
Anomic or amnestic aphasia
Anomic aphasia is one of the mildest forms of aphasia. The term applies to people who are left with a persistent inability to supply words for the very things they want to talk about, particularly meaningful nouns and verbs. The speech is fluent and grammatically correct, but is full of vague words (like 'thing') and circumlocutions (you try to describe the word they are trying to say but it doesn't come out). It's like having the word “on the tip of your tongue” all the time. which makes the speech have many expressions of frustration.
People with anomic aphasia understand speech well and can repeat words and sentences. In most cases they can read adequately. Difficulty finding words is as evident in writing as it is in speaking.
primary progressive aphasia
Primary progressive aphasia is a rare disorder in which people slowly lose their ability to speak, read, write, and understand what they hear in conversation. If caused by a stroke, aphasia can improve with the right therapy. There is no treatment to reverse primary progressive aphasia.
People with primary progressive aphasia can communicate in ways other than speech. For example, they might use gestures like sign language. And many benefits of a can be improved if there is a combination of speech therapy and medications in your treatment.