Neurological language disorders

Question 1

Define Agnosia

Answer 1

• Issues with comprehension
• Perceptual disorder
• Sensation remains intact but cannot recognise stimulus or meaning

Question 2

Define Dyspraxia

Answer 2

• Issues with transmission and co-ordination
• Motor planning and execution disorder
• Messages from brain to muscles are disrupted

Question 3

Define Dysarthria

Answer 3

• Issues with muscle weakness or paralysis
• Motor speech disorder
• Damage to motor component of motor-speech system
• Poor phoneme articulation

Question 4

Causes of neurological disorders

Answer 4

• Same as aphasia (brain damage)
• Epilepsy
• Dementias (Alzheimers)
• Migraines
• MS (multiple sclerosis)
• Parkinsons

Question 5

Agnosia:

Communicative characteristics

Answer 5

• Auditory: difficulty identifying two instances of same word
• Pure word deafness: sound-processing region of brain disconnected from language centres
• Cannot translate sounds as they do not recognise them
• vs Wernickes: wernicke’s can recognise sounds but not semantic meaning is activated

Question 6

Dyspraxia:

Communicative characteristics

Answer 6

• Difficulty co-ordinating precise movements and clear speech production
• Knows what they want to say but lacks muscle control
• Disturbance of encoding (production) free of decoding impairment (comprehension)
• Slow and erratic rhythm
• Issues with sequencing
• Difficulty with consonant clusters - often omit, substitute and add
• Vs Broca’s = Broca’s can’t say what want, word finding difficulties - dyspraxia can select sounds but sequencing problematic

Question 7

Dysarthria

Communicative characteristics

Answer 7

• Poor breathe control, phonotation, resonance and articulation
• Vocal tract muscles impaired
• Tongue movement issues
• Consistent difficulties
• May have no control over soft palate/velum
• Flat prosody and slurring

Vs Dyspraxia: all speech affected in dysarthria, only articulation in dyspraxia

Question 8

Cerebral palsy

Answer 8

• Umbrella term for disorder affecting ability to move
• Developmental
• Often related to dysarthria
• Lots resort to AAC such as speaking devices or eye movement devices

Question 9

Parkinsons

Answer 9

• Progressive neurological disease
• Rigidity of movements and tremors
• Dysarthria
• Depressive symptoms
• Deficit in word finding
• Weakness in info and memory organisation

Question 10

Multiple sclerosis

Answer 10

• Progressive neurological disease
• Subtle language problems
• Brain fog
• Word finding difficulties
• Dysarthria

Question 11

Neurological conditions treatments

Answer 11

• Therapy
• Alleviate cause
• Surgery
• Prosthetic palate (dysarthria)
• AAC
• Palliative (learn to accept)