Aphasia is a speech disorder caused by changes in those areas in the brain responsible for language which cause difficulties to people who suffer from the disorder.
The elderly are more succeptible to the disorder. Aphasia can occur in various stages and its effect varies according to the severity of the disorder. Its three most common symptomps are:
- Communicative chaos;
- Fragmentation of the message;
- The impossibility of maintaining a normal conversation.
As a conseqauence of these symptoms, those affected by aphasia have a lot of difficulty finding the word which they wish to say, or they are unable to process more complex sentences and less common words.
In global aphasia, neither repetition nor spontaneous language are present, or they might be limited to syllabic and stereotyped fragments
Types of aphasia
Wernicke´s aphasia: difficulty understanding written and spoken language, difficulty emitting sounds; mistakes in spoken language such as paraphasia (emitting sounds involuntarily) and anomia (difficulty naming people, objects or places).
Broca´s aphasia: Comprehension is largely kept intact, however articulation is impaired.
Global aphasia: combines the symptoms of the two kinds. Repetition or spontaneous language are inexistent or limited to syllabic and stereotyped fragments.
Anomic aphasia: auditory comprehension is intact, as well as a part of spoken expression, however spontaneous and fluent language shows anomia. Patients suffering from this type of aphasia have difficulty finding the exact word, and so they resort to speaking in a difuse way.
Image source: strokeassociation.org
Speech therapist´s intervention
Aphasia causes complications in various language skills such as expression, comprehension, reading and writing, and so visiting a specialised speech therapist is always recommendable. In the process of speech rehabilitation, the following must be kept in mind:
- Discovering the process which causes damage and finding out which linguistic skills have remained intact;
- Getting to know different kinds of aphasia;
- Knowing in what stage of the process the patient is in.
