Psy 402 Topic 7 DQ 1

Psy 402 Topic 7 DQ 1 Compare and contrast two different forms of aphasia. What part of the brain is specifically affected by each form and how would this affect the mental lexicon? Aphasia is defined as the loss of ability to understand or express speech, caused by brain damage. Aphasia affects a person's ability to express and understand written and spoken language.Once the underlying cause is treated, the main treatment for aphasia is speech therapy. It can occur suddenly after a stroke or head injury, or develop slowly from a growing brain tumor or disease. The three most common types of aphasia are: 1.) Broca's aphasia, 2.) Wernicke's aphasia, and 3.) Global aphasia1. In the Broca's form of aphasia , speech output is severely reduced and is limited mainly to short utterances of less than four words. Vocabulary access is limited and the formation of sounds by persons with Broca's aphasia is often laborious and clumsy. The person may understand speech relatively well and be able to read, but be limited in writing. Broca's aphasia is often referred to as a 'non fluent aphasia' because of the halting and effortful quality of speech. In the Wernicke's form of aphasia the ability to grasp the meaning of spoken words is chiefly impaired, while the ease of producing connected speech is not much affected. Therefore Wernicke's aphasia is referred to as a 'fluent aphasia.' However, speech is far from normal. Sentences do not hang together and irrelevant words intrude-sometimes to the point of jargon, in severe cases. Reading and writing are often severely impaired. The global form of aphasia is the most severe form of aphasia, and is applied to patients who can produce few recognizable words and understand little or no spoken language. Persons with Global Aphasia can neither read nor write. Global aphasia may often be seen immediately after the patient has suffered a stroke and it may rapidly improve if the damage has not been too extensive. However, with greater brain damage, severe and lasting disability may result. In addition to the foregoing syndromes that are seen repeatedly by speech clinicians, there are many other possible combinations of deficits that do not exactly fit into these categories.Some of the components of a complex aphasia syndrome may also occur in isolation. This may be the case for disorders of reading (alexia) or disorders affecting both reading and writing (alexia and agraphia), following a stroke. Severe impairments of calculation often accompany aphasia, yet in some instances patients retain excellent calculation in spite of the loss of language. References: