aphasia

Introduction

The loss of ability to communicate orally, through signs, or in writing, or the inability to understand such communications; the loss of language usage ability.

Classification

• major syndromes
  • global aphasia
  • Broca's aphasia
  • Wernicke's aphasia
• minor central aphasia syndromes
  • conduction aphasia
  • auditory aphasia (pure word deafness)
  • visual aphasia (dyslexia with dysgraphia)
• other syndromes
  • pure word blindness
  • isolation of speech areas
  • amnesic-dysnomic aphasia
  • transcortical motor aphasia
  • transcortical sensory aphasia
  • Landau-Kleffner syndrome (acquired epileptiform aphasia)
  • primary progressive aphasia variant of
    • frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease, stroke

Etiology

• posterior lesions on convexity of left cerebral hemisphere (fluent aphasia)
• anterior lesions on the convexity of the left hemisphere (nonfluent aphasia - reserved speech with intact information)

Pathology

• left anterior temporal lobe is specialized for word comprehension (recognition)

Differential diagnosis

• delirium: pattern of language deficits is more specific than slurred speech & anomia associated with delirium
• also see comparision of principal aphasic syndromes

Management

• speech therapy
• transcranial direct current stimulation may be useful for treatment of aphasia after stroke

More general terms

• language impairment; linguistic dysfunction

More specific terms

• amnesic-dysnomic aphasia (anomic aphasia)
• auditory aphasia
• Broca's aphasia (non-fluent aphasia)
• conduction aphasia
• global aphasia
• isolation of speech areas
• primary progressive aphasia (PPA, progressive non-fluent aphasia, PNFA)
• pure word blindness
• transcortical motor aphasia
• transcortical sensory aphasia
• visual aphasia
• Wernicke's aphasia; fluent aphasia; garbled speech

Additional terms

• comparision of principal aphasic syndromes
• language assessment
• paraphasia

Patient information

aphasia patient information