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Assessment and intervention in aphasia
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Aphasia is an acquired language communication disorder which is a result of localised damage to a part of the brain that is responsible for language. It usually occurs suddenly due to a stroke or head injury, but it can also develop slowly due to brain tumours, infection or dementia. Aphasia is an impairment of any language modality, for example, processing language by reading, writing, comprehension or expression. This may include difficulty in producing or understanding spoken or written language. This disorder does not affect general intellectual functioning; a person with aphasia can still carry out non-linguistic tasks. Aphasia can also occur with other speech disorders such as dysarthria or apraxia of speech, which is also a result from brain damage. This disorder affects about one million people or 1 in 250 people in America. It is more common than Parkinson’s disease or cerebral palsy however it is still not very well known. Most people that have aphasia have largely problems with receptive language. Language is not just orally impaired, but also skills such as reading and writing are as well. Normally, reading and writing are more affected than oral communication. But obviously everyone is different, so the severity of this disorder can differ too. This all depends on many factors, but most importantly the amount and location of damage to the brain.
Aphasia is usually recognized by the physician who treats the person for their brain injury. The physician performs tests that involve the patient to follow commands, answer questions, name objects, and carry on a conversation. If the physician suspects aphasia, the patient is then referred to a speech-language pathologist, who performs a comprehensive examination of the per...
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... month after the brain injury, some amount of aphasia usually remains. In these cases, speech-language therapy is very helpful. Recovery usually continues over a two-year period. It is believed by many health professionals that the most effective treatment begins early in the recovery process. Some of the factors that influence the amount of improvement include the cause of the brain damage, the area of the brain that was damaged, the extent of the brain injury, and the age and health of the individual.
Works Cited
Fromkin, V., R. Rodman & N. Hyams (2007) An Introduction to Language (International Edition, 9th Edition) Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
(7/6/2009) ‘Aphasia’ Retrieved 07/04/2011 from:
http://www.medicinenet.com/aphasia/article.htm#tocb
(23/02/2011) ‘Aphasia’ Retrieved 07/04/2011 from:
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/aphasia/Pages/Introduction.aspx
The two types of aphasia discussed in class is non-fluent aphasia and fluent aphasia. Aphasia can occur when there is damage to the left hemisphere of the brain, which is the language center of the brain. People with non-fluent aphasia will say or sign random words, there will be little or no function words/signs, similar to the telegraphic stage of language development. People with fluent aphasia will be able to produce sentences with function words, but the sentences will contain miss-selected words/signs.
I intend to explore the effects of a parietal brain injury from the perspective of a neuropsychologist; ranging from types of tests that are employed when trying to determine the extent of the damage, to gaining an understanding of how this damage will affect the rest of the brain and/or the body. I will also explore the effects of a brain injury from the perspective of the family members, and their experiences with the changes that occur during the rehabilitation process. According to The Neuropsychology Center, “neuropsychological assessment is a systematic clinical diagnostic procedure used to determine the extent of any possible behavioral deficits following diagnosed or suspected brain injury”(www.neuropsych.com). As mentioned previously, a brain injury can be the result of many types of injuries or disorders, thus a broad range of assessment procedures have been developed to encompass these possibilities.
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.
Doctor Morgan of Sussex, England, published the first case of what is now known as dyslexia in 1896. Dr. Morgan wrote about Percy F, a 14-year-old boy who was intelligent, bright, quick with learning games, and the intellectual equal of his peers. He fell behind, however, in his inability to learn how to read. Today, as in 1896, most people associate intelligence with the ability to read, but Percy F and the experience of millions of people with dyslexia breaks down the relationship between reading and intelligence (1). But, researchers were left with the question, "What causes dyslexia if intelligence is not the marker?
Ataxic dysarthria is one of several types of dysarthria. “Dysarthria is a group of motor speech disorders resulting from disturbed muscular control of the speech mechanism due to damage of the peripheral or central nervous system” (Hedge, 2001, p. 198). In specific, ataxic dysarthria is a disorder that affects the control of speech production due to damage to the cerebellum or the neural pathways that connect the cerebellum to other parts of the central nervous system.
...l and cognitive function after severe traumatic brain injury. Journal Of Trauma & Acute Care Surgery, 73(2 Suppl 1), S165-72. doi:10.1097/TA.0b013e318260896a
Children who suffer from Traumatic Brain Injury might suffer from learning disabilities as a result of their injury.
Developmental dyslexia is classified as a learning disability, particularly focusing on impaired language-based learning. It is a syndrome with a neurological origin and it exists on a spectrum with varying in severity and symptoms. The neurological basis of dyslexia is not well understood, however, research has demonstrated its origin in the left perisylvian area. (Ramus 2003, Eden et al 2016) Children with dyslexia struggle with processing writing (orthography) and sound structure of words (phonology) of languages.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive, terminal, degenerative brain disease. It is the fourth leading cause of death in adults and currently affects over four million people in the United States. This number is expected to increase over the next several years as the baby boomers age, until it reaches fourteen million by the year 2025.
Cognitive psychologists investigate processes using case studies of brain-damaged patients, these are then analysed to build models that represent normal cognitive processes. This essay will examine the contribution case studies have made to the development of cognitive neuropsychology as a discipline in its own right and draw attention to issues surrounding the use of brain damaged patients to infer cognitive functions and processes. At the same time, it will evaluate the contribution that case studies have made to our understanding of cognitive processes.
The intended purpose of the application paper is to introduce dyslexia, a neurologically based learning disability. The paper identifies the etiology, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of dyslexia as a learning disability and provides a neurological basis for the disorder. Dyslexia is defined as a reading and writing disorder, unexplained by any deficits in learning motivation, intelligence or sensitivity. Dyslexia is a disorder that is found to have changes in parts of the brain as well as significant differences in DNA. With treatment and management dyslexia has the potential to be improved and allow the individual normal functioning reading and writing skills. Dyslexia is a learning disability with many complicated factors and symptoms that can cause an individual problems in their educational career.
"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.
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.
Communication is very crucial in life, especially in education. Whether it be delivering a message or receiving information, without the ability to communicate learning can be extremely difficult. Students with speech and language disorders may have “trouble producing speech sounds, using spoken language to communicate, or understanding what other people say” (Turkington, p10, 2003) Each of these problems can create major setbacks in the classroom. Articulation, expression and reception are all essential components for communication. If a student has an issue with articulation, they most likely then have difficulty speaking clearly and at a normal rate (Turkington, 2003). When they produce words, they may omit, substitute, or even distort sounds, hindering their ability to talk. Students who lack in ways of expression have problems explaining what they are thinking and feeling because they do not understand certain parts of language. As with all types of learning disabilities, the severity can range. Two extreme cases of expression disorders are dysphasia and aphasia, in which there is partial to no communication at all (Greene, 435, 2002). Individuals can also have a receptive disorder, in which they do not fully comprehend and understand information that is being given to them. They can experience problems making sense of things. “Children may hear or see a word but not be able to understand its meaning” (National Institutes of Health, 1993, p1). Whether children have difficulty articulating speech, expressing words, receiving information, or a combination of the three, there is no doubt that the tasks given to them in school cause frustration. These children experience anxiety when...