Neuroscience

What is frontotemporal degeneration?

Frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) is a group of neurologic disorders associated with changes in personality, behavior, language or movement. Some FTD forms are inherited, and some are not. Typically, people develop FTD symptoms ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Singing found to support stroke rehabilitation

Approximately 40% of stroke survivors experience aphasia, a difficulty with comprehending or producing spoken or written language caused by a cerebrovascular accident. In half of these cases the language impairment still ...

Neuroscience

New research highlights gaps in regional post-stroke care

Queensland researchers have been working to determine how to better support speech pathologists in remote and regional areas to provide best practice care to people with aphasia following stroke.

Medical research

Gestures can improve understanding in language disorders

When words fail, gestures can help to get the message across—especially for people who have a language disorder. An international research team has now shown that listeners attend the gestures of people with aphasia more ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Lost for words—the devastation caused by aphasia

Aphasia is a devastating diagnosis that affects your ability to speak or understand language. It's a little-known condition that effects 300,000 Europeans every year and recently made headlines when actor Bruce Willis announced ...

Neuroscience

Five diseases attack language areas in brain

There are five different diseases that attack the language areas in the left hemisphere of the brain that slowly cause progressive impairments of language known as primary progressive aphasia (PPA), reports a new Northwestern ...

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Aphasia ( /əˈfeɪʒə/ or /əˈfeɪziə/, from Greek ἀφασία, "speechlessness") is an impairment of language ability. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write.

Aphasia disorders usually develop quickly as a result of head injury or stroke, but can develop slowly from a brain tumor, infection, or dementia, or can be a learning disability such as dysnomia.

The area and extent of brain damage determine the type of aphasia and its symptoms. Aphasia types include Broca's aphasia, non-fluent aphasia, motor aphasia, expressive aphasia, receptive aphasia, global aphasia and many others (see Category:Aphasias).

Medical evaluations for the disorder range from clinical screenings by a neurologist to extensive tests by a language pathologist.

Most aphasia patients can recover some or most skills by working with a speech and language therapist. This rehabilitation can take two or more years and is most effective when begun quickly. Only a small minority will recover without therapy, such as those suffering a mini-stroke. Patients with a learning-disorder aphasia such as dysnomia can learn coping skills, but cannot recover abilities that are congenitally limited.

Improvement varies widely, depending on the aphasia's cause, type, and severity. Recovery also depends on the patient's age, health, motivation, handedness, and educational level.

This text uses material from Wikipedia licensed under CC BY-SA