Disorders of Language

Question 1

Aphasia?

Answer 1

a disturbance in language as a result of brain damage

Question 2

causes of acute onset aphasia?

Answer 2

stroke, penetrating head injury, surgery

Question 3

causes of insidious onset progressive aphasia?

Answer 3

dementia, neoplastic change

Question 4

causes of paroxysmal-episodic aphasia?

Answer 4

focal seizures, migraine

Question 5

which hemisphere tends to dominate language?

Answer 5

LEFT hemisphere

Question 6

what is the role of right hemisphere in speech?

Answer 6

non-propositional speech, prosody, and paralingistic aspects of speech

Question 7

what is the main artery servicing the language center’s?

Answer 7

Middle cerebral artery services the lateral aspects of frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes.

Question 8

what are the divisions of the middle cerebral artery

Answer 8

superior division - servicing the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and sensorimotor cortex.

inferior division - servicing posteriorly to temporoparietal cortex and visual tracts

Question 9

components of our language system? and damage to each component causes?

Answer 9

1. production of words –>non-fluent language disorders

2. Selection of words – > fluent language disorders

Question 10

what type of aphasia would an anterior lesion be expected to produce?

Answer 10

non-fluent aphasia
loss of grammatical structure
but intact selection of content

Question 11

what type of aphasia would an posterior lesion be expected to produce?

Answer 11

fluent aphasia
impairment of content selection
but intact grammatical sequence

Question 12

Broca’s aphasia. Fluent or Non fluent?

Answer 12

Non fluent

Question 13

Wernicke’s aphasia. Fluent or non fluent?

Answer 13

Fluent.

Question 14

Which middle cerebral artery branch would an ANTERIOR lesion be associated with?

Answer 14

superior division

Question 15

Which middle cerebral artery branch would an POSTERIOR lesion be associated with?

Answer 15

inferior division

Question 16

where is broca’s area? how many gyri?

Answer 16

prefrontal cortex. two main gyri.

Question 17

where is wernicke’s area?

Answer 17

temporoparietal cortex

Question 18

what is the white matter tract connecting broca’s and wernicke’s area? (hypothetical tract)

Answer 18

arcuate fasciculus

Question 19

what are the features of wernicke’s aphasia syndrome?

Answer 19

• FLUENT jargonistic language outputs (neologisms and paraphasic errors)
• impaired comprehension
• right quadrantanopia (defective vision in 1/4 of right vf)
• no motor weakness

Question 20

what are the features of Broca’s aphasia syndrome?

Answer 20

• NON FLUENT, highly effortful language output
• telegrammatic
• preserved comprehension
• right face and arm weakness

Question 21

conduction aphasia?

Answer 21

fluent aphasia, not as severe as Wernicke’s.

• poor repetition of words
• relatively intact basic comprehension of words

Question 22

transcortical motor aphasia?

Answer 22

non fluent aphasia
this is muteness at its most severe
repetition is preserved

Question 23

contralateral transfer vs ipsilateral reorganization

Answer 23

contralateral transfer may occur in the case of early hemispherectomy in neonates, motor and speech is mostly preserved.

ipsilateal reorganization tends to occur in adults post-stroke, tends to cause hemiparesis and language impairment.