Disorders of Language Flashcards
Aphasia?
a disturbance in language as a result of brain damage
causes of acute onset aphasia?
stroke, penetrating head injury, surgery
causes of insidious onset progressive aphasia?
dementia, neoplastic change
causes of paroxysmal-episodic aphasia?
focal seizures, migraine
which hemisphere tends to dominate language?
LEFT hemisphere
what is the role of right hemisphere in speech?
non-propositional speech, prosody, and paralingistic aspects of speech
what is the main artery servicing the language center’s?
Middle cerebral artery services the lateral aspects of frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes.
what are the divisions of the middle cerebral artery
superior division - servicing the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and sensorimotor cortex.
inferior division - servicing posteriorly to temporoparietal cortex and visual tracts
components of our language system? and damage to each component causes?
- production of words –>non-fluent language disorders
2. Selection of words – > fluent language disorders
what type of aphasia would an anterior lesion be expected to produce?
non-fluent aphasia
loss of grammatical structure
but intact selection of content
what type of aphasia would an posterior lesion be expected to produce?
fluent aphasia
impairment of content selection
but intact grammatical sequence
Broca’s aphasia. Fluent or Non fluent?
Non fluent
Wernicke’s aphasia. Fluent or non fluent?
Fluent.
Which middle cerebral artery branch would an ANTERIOR lesion be associated with?
superior division
Which middle cerebral artery branch would an POSTERIOR lesion be associated with?
inferior division
where is broca’s area? how many gyri?
prefrontal cortex. two main gyri.
where is wernicke’s area?
temporoparietal cortex
what is the white matter tract connecting broca’s and wernicke’s area? (hypothetical tract)
arcuate fasciculus
what are the features of wernicke’s aphasia syndrome?
- FLUENT jargonistic language outputs (neologisms and paraphasic errors)
- impaired comprehension
- right quadrantanopia (defective vision in 1/4 of right vf)
- no motor weakness
what are the features of Broca’s aphasia syndrome?
- NON FLUENT, highly effortful language output
- telegrammatic
- preserved comprehension
- right face and arm weakness
conduction aphasia?
fluent aphasia, not as severe as Wernicke’s.
- poor repetition of words
- relatively intact basic comprehension of words
transcortical motor aphasia?
non fluent aphasia
this is muteness at its most severe
repetition is preserved
contralateral transfer vs ipsilateral reorganization
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.
