Aphasia (Wernicke's and Broca's) Flashcards
What is Wernicke’s aphasia?
Receptive aphasia; individuals have difficulty understanding written and spoken language
What are the signs of Wernicke’s aphasia?
Patients with Wernicke’s aphasia demonstrate fluent speech, which is characterised by typical speech rate, intact syntactic abilities and effortless speech output. Speech may make no sense, but patients are unaware of this
Difficulty understanding written and spoken language
What causes Wernicke’s aphasia?
Stroke of the middle cerebral arteries or left middle cerebral
Wernicke’s aphasia is most commonly caused by a lesion in the posterior superior temporal gyrus (Wernicke’s area)
How is Wernicke’s aphasia diagnosed?
Aphasia recognised by clinician and assessed
MRI or CT can confirm
How is Wernicke’s aphasia managed?
Speech and language therapy
Auditory comprehension treatment
Neuroplasticity is key in regaining control
What is the prognosis for Wernicke’s aphasia?
Prognosis is strongly dependent on the location and extent of the lesion (damage) to the brain. Many personal factors also influence how a person will recover, which include age, previous medical history, level of education, gender, and motivation.
A 50 year old woman has acute confusion. She speaks fluently, in terms of speech rate and structure. However, there is no real content or meaning to any of her sentences. She is found to have aphasia following a stroke in Wernicke’s speech area.
Which is the most likely site of the lesion?
Wernicke’s area is located at the Superior temporal gyrus, usually in the left hemisphere.
What is anomia?
Poor word retrieval: ability to retrieve target words is impaired
Common in Wernicke’s aphasia
What is Broca’s aphasia?
Broca’s (expressive) aphasia is a type of non-fluent aphasia in which an individual’s speech is halting and effortful, and understanding of speech is impaired
How does a patient with Broca’s aphasia present?
Speech generally includes important content words but leaves out function words that have more grammatical significance than physical meaning, such as prepositions and articles
The person’s intended message may still be understood, but their sentence will not be grammatically correct. In very severe forms of expressive aphasia, a person may only speak using single word utterances
“Yes… ah… Monday… er… Dad and Peter H… (his own name), and Dad…. er… hospital… and ah… Wednesday… Wednesday, nine o’clock… and oh… Thursday… ten o’clock, ah doctors… two… an’ doctors… and er… teeth… yah”
What would the aphasia be?
Broca’s aphasia
What are causes for Broca’s aphasia?
Stroke (most common)
Brain tumour
Brain trauma
Where is Broca’s area?
Left anterior motor cortex
What is the prognosis for Broca’s aphasia?
In most individuals with expressive aphasia, the majority of recovery is seen within the first year following a stroke or injury.
The majority of this improvement is seen in the first four weeks in therapy following a stroke and slows thereafter
