Aphasia is a condition characterized by the loss of ability to understand speech because of brain damage. Broca’s Aphasia can happen when an individual has a stroke and damages the frontal regions of the left-hemisphere. Aphasic disorders are categorized as fluent or nonfluent aphasia. Broca’s Aphasia is classified as nonfluent because of a lesion in the left frontal lobe on the left posterior inferior frontal region, called Broca’s area. This subdivision of the brain is important for the ability to form sentences and to string words together. I will be looking at two different types of treatments for Broca’s Aphasia: intense intonation-based speech therapy and the use of amphetamine paired with speech/language therapy. Schlaug, Marchina, …show more content…
(2001) did a double-blind study with 21 aphasic patients (13 men, eight women) with an acute nonhemorrhagic infarction who were randomly assigned to receive either 10 mg dextroamphetamine or a placebo. Researchers have looked at numerous studies focused on drugs that increase the release of norepinephrine which promotes recovery when administered late after brain injury in animals. Walker-Batson et al. (2001) wanted to extend these findings to patients with aphasia, so they administered dextoamphetamine paired with speech/language therapy. Each patient completed the NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS), which provided a baseline score of neurological involvement. To make sure a patient had an infarction a CT or MRI was used to confirm it. The Porch Index of Communicative Abilities (PICA) was used to categorize patients having moderately or severe aphasia on a scale of 10 to 70 points. Patients who scored lesser than or equal to 40 were classified as having severe aphasia and those who scored between 41 and 70 are classified as having severe aphasia. The researchers, clinicians, patients, and the patient’s primary-care physicians were blinded to the conditioned he or she was assigned to (drug or …show more content…
Walker-Batson et al. (2001) and Whiting et al. (2007) used speech/language therapy paired with an amphetamine. I think changing the therapy would be beneficial to people who have Broca’s aphasia because patients can sing well-articulated words. By focusing on the intone patterns to exaggerate the tones into a melodically intoned pattern, it would lead to better communication. By including an amphetamine with this treatment, it may boost the improvements of the patients language output even more than just intense intonation therapy
Mr. Fix-it is a 59 year old man with a history of alcohol abuse and diabetic hypertension. Mr. Fix-it has been currently experiencing symptoms such as: rambling speech, poor short-term memory, weakness on the left side of his body, neglects both visual and auditory stimuli to his left side, difficulty with rapid visual scanning, difficulty with complex visual, perceptual and constructional tasks, unable to recall nonverbal materials, and mild articulatory problems. The diagnosis for Mr. Fix-it’s problem is most likely a right-hemisphere stroke. A right-hemisphere stroke is occurs when a blood clot blocks a vessel in the brain, or when there is a torn vessel bleeding into the brain. “A right-hemisphere stroke is common in adults who have diabetes and who are over the age of 55”, similar to Mr. Fix-it (Kluwer, 2012). In addition, Mr. Fix-it has a history of alcohol abuse in which it could have also increased his chances of experiencing a right-hemisphere stroke.
The two most common types of aphasia is Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. Broca's aphasia is known as non-fluent because a patient has difficulty retrieving and producing fluent speech. Instead a Broca's aphasia patient produces slow speech and "telegraphic" skipping function words and grammatical morphemes. Wernicke's aphasia is known as fluent aphasia because the patients have no idea producing speech it just does not make sense and even made up words.
Scientists are on the brink of doing the unthinkable-replenishing the brains of people who have suffered strokes or head injuries to make them whole again. If that is not astonishing enough, they think they may be able to reverse paralysis. The door is at last open to lifting the terrifying sentence these disorders still decree-loss of physical function, cognitive skills, memory, and personality.
Strokes and tumors are one of the main causes of epilepsy in adults 50 years or older. About two years after a stroke 10-20% of survivors will experience seizures and be diagnosed with epilepsy. The likelih...
Concurrent Treatment is different than traditional therapy for a speech sound disorder or articulation disorder. Instead of targeting speech sounds in order of complexity from syllable to word to phrase to sentence and so on, Concurrent Treatment bypasses the need for these steps and targets speech sounds with all of these things in a random order every session. In previous studies, Skelton (2004),
Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder that disrupts communication and it can deteriorate a person’s coping potential and quality of life (Parr, 2001) which involve damage to the parts of brain that contain language (ASHA, 2013). Statistics from United States indicated around 25-40% of stroke survivors developed aphasia (National Association of Aphasia, NAA, 2013). Aphasia will affect both the ability to produce or comprehend spoken language and written language while intelligence is left intact (NAA, 2013). In US, it is found that the most common cause of aphasia is stroke (85%) and others including Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), brain tumor or other degenerative diseases (NAA, 2013).
The article opens up with an explanation as to what the method of coaching is. According to Holland, “life coaching”, as it is called, is considered to be a variant of typical counseling. Coaching is in its early stages (as of 2007), yet it is used in developments and processes that are designed to help individuals with aphasia live their lives to the fullest and improve their quality of life. The work of Goldsmith (an earlier mentioned practitioner) is the author’s main interest. Goldsmith’s approach involves what one may call a “Buddhist” way of thinking; meaning change is seen as a positive thing. Speech-language pathologists place their trust in their client’s ability to take on new skills, arrange their new language capabilities, and acquire new problem-solving tactics.
Aphasia can be defined as a disorder that is caused by damage to parts of the brain that are responsible for language (“Aphasia” n.p.). Wernicke’s aphasia is a type of fluent aphasia (with the other type being nonfluent). It is named after Carl Wernicke who described the disorder as “an amnesiac disorder characterized by fluent but disordered speech, with a similar disorder in writing, and impaired understanding of oral speech and reading” (“Wernicke’s” n.p.). Wernicke’s aphasia can also be known as sensory aphasia, fluent aphasia, or receptive aphasia. It is a type of aphasia that is caused by damage to Wernicke’s area in the brain, in the posterior part of the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere. This area of the brain contains motor neurons responsible for the understanding of spoken language and is believed to be the receptive language center (“Rogers” n.p.). Wernicke’s aphasia can be most efficiently defined as a fluent language disorder commonly caused by strokes and characterized by difficulty comprehending spoken language and producing meaningful speech and writing which is both assessable by an SLP and treatable by a variety of methods.
"My most valuable tool is words, the words I can now use only with difficulty. My voice is debilitated - mute, a prisoner of a communication system damaged by a stroke that has robbed me of language," stated A. H. Raskins, one of approximately one million people in the United States who suffer from aphasia (1), a disorder which limits the comprehension and expression of language. It is an acquired impairment due to brain injury in the left cerebral hemisphere. The most common cause of aphasia is a stroke, but other causes are brain tumors, head injury, or other neuralgic illnesses. Of the estimated 400,000 strokes which occur a year, approximately 80,000 of those patients develop some form of aphasia (2). Another important observation is that within the United States, there are twice as many people with aphasia as there are individuals with Parkinson's disease (2). Yet, what is so astounding is the lack of public awareness about aphasia. Aphasia attacks an intricate part of a person's daily life - the simple act of communication and sharing. The disbursement of such a tool deprives an individual of education learned through their life, often leaving the ill fated feeling hopeless and alone. In considering the effects of aphasia, a deeper analysis of the two most common forms of aphasia will be examined: Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia. While both forms occur usually as a result of a stroke in the left hemisphere of the brain, their particular site of impairment produces different side effects in an individual's comprehension and speech. These regions have been further studied through experimental researches such as positron emission tomography (PET). Moreover, although there is currently no cure for the disorder, there are treatments and certain guidelines to follow when encountering an aphasic.
Stroke is a commonly known disease that is often fatal. This cellular disease occurs when blood flow to the brain is interrupted by either a blood clot halting the progress of blood cells in an artery, called an Ischemic stroke, or a blood vessel in the brain bursting or leaking causing internal bleeding in the brain, called a hemorrhagic stroke. When this happens, brain cells are deprived of oxygen and nutrients because the blood cells carrying these essential things are stopped, causing them to die. When the cells in the brain die, sensation or movement in a limb might be cut off and may limit an organism’s abilities. A person with stroke is affected depending on where in the brain the stroke occurs. In other words, symptoms of a stroke
Salonen, L. (2013). L. S. Vygotsky 's psychology and theory of learning applied to the rehabilitation of aphasia: A developmental and systemic view. Aphasiology, 27(5), 615-635. doi:10.
McDonnell, M.N., Bryan, J., Smith, A.E., & Esterman, A.J. (2011). Assessing cognitive impairment following stroke. Journal of Clinical & Experimental Neuropsychology, 33(9), 945-953.
There comes a time in our life when we know what we want to say, but it does not come out the way we thought it would. Such as being worried about reading out loud in class, going up to an employee in a fast food restaurant to order a simple meal, or making a presentation in class can be terrifying for most individuals with an articulation disorder. An articulation disorder consist of having difficulties producing sounds, substituting sounds, leaving out letters in a word, or adding or changing letters in a word. In most cases when individuals have trouble articulating words he/she might have problems with the main articulators which include: the jaw, lips, teeth, tongue, velum, alveolar ridge, and hard/soft palate. These articulators play
In this world, humans and animals alike have come to communicate by using various mechanisms. Humans have advanced themselves beyond other organisms by using language, or a set of codes and symbols, in order to express themselves to others. Language has brought about a means to create new thoughts, to explore, and to analyze our everyday surroundings. It has also enabled us to retain past memories and to look deep into the advances for the future. However, for some individuals, this tool for communication has been plagued by a language and speech disorders, such as aphasia. Aphasia is the loss of the ability to speak or understand speech or written language. It is often detected at an early age, and contributes to the general class of speech and language disorders affecting "5% of school aged children" (1) . Aphasia is classified into three categories. The main two are receptive or sensory aphasia and expressive or motor aphasia. Receptive aphasia affects the input side and "the ability to understand spoken or written language may be partially or totally lost" (1) . Those with expressive aphasia "can speak but not find certain words or names, or may be totally unable to communicate verbally or by writing" (1) . For a majority of affected individuals, there is a combination of the two. The third type is conduction aphasia. This "involves disruption of transmission between the sensory and motor ends of the circuit" (1) . Here, individuals are able to produce speech despite the lack of connections to the input side. It seems that the ability to speak has a lot to do with your surroundings and how much emphasis was placed on developing this skill during the first few years after birth. Afterall, it's known that the first few years are critical because this is the time when the brain is "plastic" and is rapidly changing and being molded. By the time that adolescence is reached, the brain has become "less plastic". In this paper, I would like to explore theories proposed to try to understand the origins of this impairment.
Lubinski R. 2010. Speech Therapy or Speech-Language Pathology. In: JH Stone, M Blouin, editors. International Encyclopedia of Rehabilitation. Available online: http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/encyclopedia/en/article/333/