Left Hem. - Broca's Area

Question 1

where?

Answer 1

• Left Frontal Lobe, just rostral to the base of the Primary Motor Cortex which controls face and mouth movements

Question 2

Damage?

Answer 2

to this and surrounding Cortical area, including underlying Basal Ganglia => Broca’s Aphasia

• Symptoms vary, but can include Articulation Difficulties, Agrammatism, and Anomia

Question 3

“Nonfluent” or “Productive Aphasia”

Answer 3

deficits in producing (& comprehending) grammatical speech

• Subjects are aware of and highly frustrated by deficits

Question 4

Articulation Difficulites:

Answer 4

Speech is slow, halting, laborious (loss of prosody), words often mispronounced

(e. g. phonemes switched, such as “lipstick” => “lickstip”)
- However, words generally used correctly and speech is at least somewhat comprehensible

Question 5

Agrammatism

Answer 5

Although speech fairly meaningful tend to omit Closed Class (grammatical) terms such as
Prepositions (of, by, for) Articles (the, a) Conjunctions (and but), Tense & # markers (-ed -es) etc.
- That is, speech consists mainly of nouns, verbs and adjectives (“Content Terms”)
- Cannot even repeat or read Closed Class terms
- e.g. Can repeat COWS EAT GRASS but cannot repeat NO IFS, ANDS, OR BUTS
- e.g. Can read TWO BEE OAR KNOT TWO BEE, but cannot read TO BE OR NOT TO BE
- Comprehension of grammatical forms, including Word Order, also impaired
- e.g. Cannot follow sequential commands - “Pick up the red circle & touch the green square with it”
- e.g. Given “The cow kicks the horse” can’t choose correct drawing (cow kick horse vs. horse kick cow)
- Unless can use meaning to figure out probable order - e.g. can choose “Man swats mosquito”
- So in general comprehension is better than production

Question 6

Anomia

Answer 6

Cannot “find” word. In Broca’s Aphasia, Anomia mainly affects Closed Class terms
- Also produces deficits in Sign Language production