Aphasias

Question 1

What is aphaisa?

Answer 1

• an impairment of the ability to produce, comprehend or repeat language that results from an acquired brain injury, such as a stroke, tumor, head injury, or progressive degenerative disease

Question 2

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 2

production 
o nonfluent, possibly apraxia or dysarthia, 
o verb finding harder than noun finding
o closed-class elements impaired
o reduced syntactic complexity
comphrension
o relatively preserved
o poor comprehension of complex syntax, reversed word order
repetition 
o disrupted 
o multiword sentences hard
o closed-class items hard

Question 3

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 3

production 
o nonfluent, possibly apraxia or dysarthia, 
o verb finding harder than noun finding
o closed-class elements impaired
o reduced syntactic complexity
comphrension
o relatively preserved
o poor comprehension of complex syntax, reversed word order
repetition 
o disrupted 
o multiword sentences hard
o closed-class items hard

Question 4

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with Wernicke’s apahisa

Answer 4

production:
o fluent
o phonemic paraphasias ( words that sound the same), jargon (well articulated, meaningless speech)
o morphological substitutions 
o patients often unaware
comprehension :
o sentence and phrases impaired
o even words may be impaired 
repetition :
o disrupted 
o errors of word choice, phonology, grammar

Question 5

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with Wernicke’s apahisa

Answer 5

production:
o fluent
o phonemic paraphasias ( words that sound the same), jargon (well articulated, meaningless speech)
o morphological substitutions 
o patients often unaware
comprehension :
o sentence and phrases impaired
o even words may be impaired 
repetition :
o disrupted 
o errors of word choice, phonology, grammar

Question 6

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with conduction aphasia

Answer 6

production
• more fluent than brocas, less than wernickes
• phonemic paraphrasisa
• reccurent attempts to produce desired phonological form
comprehension
o relatively preserved
o possible difficulties with long sentence with high STM load
repetition
o disrupted
o multi-word sequences disturbed

Question 7

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with global apahsia

Answer 7

production 
o	severely impaired
o	major lesion 
compression 
o	relatively preserved
repetition
o	relatively preserve

Question 8

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with anomic aphaisa

Answer 8

production 
o	fluent with hesitations
o	marked word-finding difficulty
o	sometimes some word categories worse than others
comprehension 
o	relatively preserved
repetition 
o	relatively preserved

Question 9

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with transcortical motor aphasia

Answer 9

production 
o	poor planning and initiation 
comprehension 
o	relatively preserved 
repetition
o	good

Question 10

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with transcortical sensory aphasia

Answer 10

production 
o	phonemic paraphasias
comprehension  
o	impaired
repetition 
o	good

Question 11

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in those with mixed transcortical aphasia

Answer 11

production 
o	combination of motor and sensory
comprehension 
o	impaired 
repetition 
o	good

Question 12

What are the 6 types of aphasias in polyglots?

Answer 12

• selective: one lang partially recovered, one not
• differential: one lang recovered better than the other
• successive: one lang partially recovered first, the other one later
• antagonistic: one lang progresses while the other regresses
• alternating antagonistic: availability shifts back and forth between langs
• blending or mixed: properties of various languages are mixed

Question 13

what are the main types of progressive aphasias?

Answer 13

1. Semantic Dementia: trouble naming people, objects, facts and words.
2. progressive non-fluent/agrammatical aphasia (PNFA) - difficulty producing language fluently even though they retain the meanings of words. talk slowly
3. logopenic progressive aphasia (LPA) - Word-finding difficulties, speech production skills are spared, pause often to try to think of the words they want to say.

Question 14

what are the 3 main types of progressive aphasias?

Answer 14

1. Semantic Dementia: trouble with word meanings - fluent but “empty speech with general terms (things) - word finding problems
2. progressive non-fluent/agrammatical aphasia (PNFA) - difficulty producing language fluently even though they retain the meanings of words. talk slowly
3. logopenic progressive aphasia (LPA) - Word-finding difficulties, speech production skills are spared, pause often to try to think of the words they want to say.

Question 15

What is production, comprehension and reptition like in semantic dementia?

Answer 15

p
o fluent but with semantic errors
c
o impaired
r
o intact

Question 16

Where is the atrophy in semantic dementia. What other non-verbal deficits?

Answer 16

•atrophy
o anterior temporal lobes
•non verbal deficits
o object recognition, social cognition, emotional regulation, empathy, ability to understand what other people are thinking

Question 17

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in progressive non-fluent/agrammatical aphasia (PNFA)?

Answer 17

• production
o nonfluent, hesitant, agrammatic, often phonological errors, often apraxia of speech
• comprehension
o often intact for single words, simple sentence, impaired for complex sentences
• repetition
o impaired

Question 18

Where is the atrophy in PNFA. What other non-verbal deficits?

Answer 18

• atrophy
o left posterior inferior frontal gyrus (broca’s area) extending posteriorly into insulate

• non verbal deficits
o working memory, executive functions

Question 19

What is production, comprehension and repetition like in logopenic progressive aphasia (LPA)

Answer 19

• p
o sever word finding difficulties, some phomenic parahphasias
• c
o mostly intact for single words and simple sentences, impaired for complex sentences
• r
o usually intact for single

Question 20

Where is the atrophy in LPA. What other non-verbal deficits?

Answer 20

• atrophy
o left posterior superior temporal gyrus (Wernickes)

• non verbal deficits
o ideomotor apraxia (cant imagine how to do things, ex. can you show me how you brush your hair, can’t picture actions in ones head), calculation difficulties