Is an inability to comprehend and formulate language because of dysfunction in specific brain
regions.Most often caused by a cerebral vascular accident (CVA), which is also known as a
stroke, aphasia can cause impairments in speech and language modalities.
To be diagnosed with aphasia, a person's speech or language must be significantly impaired in one
(or several) of the four communication modalities following acquired brain injury or have significant
decline over a short time period (progressive aphasia). The four communication modalities are
auditory comprehension, verbal expression, reading and writing, and functional communication.
There are four types of aphasias
Broca´s Aphasia
Individuals with Broca’s aphasia have trouble speaking fluently but their comprehension can be
relatively preserved. This type of aphasia is also known as non-fluent or expressive aphasia.
Patients have difficulty producing grammatical sentences and their speech is limited mainly to short
utterances of less than four words. Producing the right sounds or finding the right words is often a
laborious process. Some persons have more difficulty using verbs than using nouns.
Wernicke´s Aphasia
In this form of aphasia the ability to grasp the meaning of spoken words and sentences is impaired,
while the ease of producing connected speech is not very affected. Therefore Wernicke’s aphasia is
also referred to as ‘fluent aphasia’ or ‘receptive aphasia’.
Reading and writing are often severely impaired. As in other forms of aphasia, individuals can have
completely preserved intellectual and cognitive capabilities unrelated to speech and language.
Conduction Aphasia
A type of fluent aphasia with a prominent impairment with repetition. Damage typically involves the
arcuate fasciculus and the left parietal region. The patient may be able to express him- or herself
fairly well, with some word-finding issues, and comprehension can be functional.
However, the patient will show significant difficulty repeating phrases, particularly as the phrases
increase in length and complexity and as they stumble over words they are attempting to pronounce.
This type of aphasia is rare.
Anomic Aphasia
Anomic aphasia is one of the milder forms of aphasia. The term is applied to persons who are left
with a persistent inability to supply the words for the very things they want to talk about, particularly
the significant nouns and verbs.
Their speech is fluent and grammatically correct but it is full of vague words (such as ‘thing’) and
circumlocutions (attempts to describe the word they are trying to find). The feeling is often that of
having the word on the tip of one’s tongue, which results in their speech having lots of expressions of
frustration.
People with anomic aphasia understand speech well and they can repeat words and sentences. In
most cases they can read adequately. Difficulty finding words is as evident in writing as it is in
speech.