W21-L10: Disorders of Language Flashcards
Aphasia
A disturbance in language as a result of brain damage
Describe the Hemispheric dominance
Right hemisphere for visuospatial function and left hemisphere for language
What does the superior division of the middle cerebral artery supply?
- Sensorimotor cortex
- Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex
What does the inferior division of the middle cerebral artery supply?
- Temporoparietal cortex
- Visual tracts
What are characteristics of non-fluent aphasia and what is it called?
- Anterior lesion
- Loss of grammatical (sequential) structure
- Intact selection of content
- Broca’s aphasia
What are characteristics of fluent aphasia and what is it called?
- Posterior lesion
- Impaired selection of content
- Intact grammatical (sequential) structure
- Wernicke’s aphasia
What is the Arcuate Fasciculus?
A hypothetical white matter tract that connects areas of language together (Broca’s and Wernicke’s)
What are the symptoms of the syndrome of wernicke’s aphasia?
- Fluent jargonistic language output
- Impaired comprehension
- Right quadrantanopsia
- No motor weakness
What are the symptoms of the syndrome of Broca’s aphasia?
- Non-fluent, highly effortful language output
- Telegrammatic
- Preserved comprehension
- Right face and arm weakness
What is conduction aphasia?
- Fluent aphasia, but more meaningful than Wernicke’s type
- Relatively intact basic auditory comprehension
- Poor repetition of words
What is the suspected lesion that causes conduction aphasia?
Lesion of the arcuate fasiculus tract
What is transcortical motor aphasia?
- Non-fluent aphasia
- Muteness at most severe
- Repetition is preserved
What are some mechanisms of recovery to aphasias?
- Contralateral transfer
- Ipsilateral re-organization
- reorganising into two hemispheres is better than reorganising into one
