Aphasia: A Language Disorder :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Aphasia A Language Disorder My most valuable tool is words, the words I can now use only with difficulty. My articulation is debilitated - mute, a prisoner of a communication system damaged by a stroke that has robbed me of language, stated A. H. Raskins, one of somewhat one one thousand thousand people in the United States who suffer from aphasia (1), a disorder which limits the comprehension and expression of language. It is an acquired impairment due to brain injury in the left intellectual hemisphere. The most common cause of aphasia is a stroke, but other causes are brain tumors, head injury, or other neuralgic illnesses. Of the estimated 400,000 strokes which occur a year, approximately 80,000 of those patients develop some form of aphasia (2). Another important observation is that within the United States, there are twice as many people with aphasia as there are individuals with Parkinsons disease (2). Yet, what is so astounding is the lack of public awareness about aphasia. Aphasia attacks an intricate part of a persons daily intent - the simple act of communication and sharing. The disbursement of such a tool deprives an individual of education learned through their life, often leaving the ill unredeemed feeling hopeless and alone. In considering the effects of aphasia, a deeper analysis of the two most common forms of aphasia will be examined Brocas aphasia and Wernickes aphasia. While both forms occur normally as a result of a stroke in the left hemisphere of the brain, their particular site of impairment produces different side effects in an individuals comprehension and speech. These regions have been further studied through experimental researches such as positron emission tomography (PET). Moreover, although there is currently no mend for the disorder, there are treatments and certain guidelines to follow when encountering an aphasic.In physiological terms, Brocas aphasia and Wernickes aphasia occur in the left hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for controlling the right side of the consistency along with speech and language abilities. Brocas aphasia affects the frontal lobe adjacent to the primary motor cortex, and Wernickes aphasia affects the posterior portion of the first frontal lobe (3). A general distinction make between the two disorders are that Brocas aphasia limits speech, while Wernickes aphasia limits comprehension.Brocas aphasia characterizes patients as people who has loss the production of complete sentence structures in speech and writing. Although the individual may keep open the usage of nouns and verbs, the aphasic may have lost all forms of pronouns, articles, and conjunctions (3).