Examples Of Patients With Aphasia To Better Understand This Alteration
Aphasias can arise for various reasons and have different manifestations. on the language of the affected people.
We are going to delve into this alteration to try to understand it better, know what are the possible causes that can generate it and the consequences they have on the affected people, supporting all this on a series of examples of aphasia cases that will allow us to visualize the problem.
If we want to know different examples of patients with aphasia, it is necessary to first know this term and its implications well. Aphasia is an alteration in the individual’s ability to understand or use language, which can manifest itself in very different ways.
This difficulty It arises as a result of an injury to the brain, either due to a pathology, such as a tumor, an infection, a cerebral infarction or even a degenerative disease., but they can also be caused by external aggressions, such as trauma. All of these situations, if they affect a certain area of the brain, can lead to some type of aphasia.
Although we will see it in depth when reviewing the examples of patients with aphasia, we must know that the brain areas sensitive to the development of this alteration are located in the left hemisphere, and are usually Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas, mainly, although others regions may also be compromised.
A person with a language disorder can manifest it, depending on the injury, in very different ways., from difficulty or inability to find certain words, problems repeating sequences, difficulty in pronunciation, misunderstanding of words, disorder when speaking and many others. We will review these possibilities by focusing on examples of patients with aphasia.
Different examples of patients with aphasia
Now that we have a first basis to understand the implications of this language disorder, we can move on to review the different examples of patients with aphasia. To do this, we are going to try to describe the main types that can be found regarding this alteration.
The first example of patients with aphasia that we are going to see is that of Wernicke. It receives this name because it was caused by damage to Wernicke’s area which, as we already saw, is one of the brain areas that is usually involved in aphasia, precisely because this region is one of those responsible for language.
A person who suffers from Wernicke’s aphasia will be characterized by having serious difficulties understanding language. Paradoxically, Yes, he is capable of speaking fluently, but only if we take into account the form, since the content makes no sense..
One of the most frequent errors that these patients make is replacing some words with others that are phonetically similar, but whose meaning is completely different. This is known as phonemic paraphasia. This peculiarity, as we will see when reviewing this example of a patient with aphasia, makes it really difficult to communicate with them.
One of these people could say, for example: “I want you to have a cold face.” The point is that the subject would not be aware that the sentence he has said is completely unintelligible. That feature It also generates additional frustration for patients, as they must deal with their language problem and a feeling of incomprehension..
2. Example of Broca’s aphasia
Continuing with the examples of patients with aphasia, we must now focus on Broca’s aphasia, which, together with Wernicke’s, represent the two most frequent cases of these alterations. Broca’s is an aphasia caused by damage to the region of the same name in the brain.
Unlike the previous case, these patients can understand language reasonably well. (although they may experience difficulties), but the biggest problem is observed when speaking, since at a motor level they have lost or have seen their ability to pronounce words seriously compromised.
Therefore, the patient would emit telegraphic-type speech, using short phrases, which require enormous effort. Under these conditions, what we would hear when a person with Broca’s aphasia tried to talk to us could be something similar to this: “Plate, plate, table,” instead of “You have to put two plates on the table.”
We can observe the difference between these two examples of patients with aphasia. In the first case, the speech is unintelligible, although the patient does not realize this. However, in the second case, the person is aware of the effort and difficulty, although he manages to send a message, albeit brief, to try to express himself. The first is a sensory aphasia and the second is a motor aphasia.
3. Example of conduction aphasia
The next example of patients with aphasia that we should review is conduction aphasia. This problem is due to damage to the temporal lobe. In this case, the subject would have no problems understanding the language. His difficulty would arise when trying to repeat a word or phrase.
Although sometimes they would manage to complete this task (with a lot of effort), the truth is that in most cases they would have serious problems, and would end up using synonyms, phonologically similar words, and even words that mean nothing. To repeat numbers, they could also make the mistake of varying the order of the digits.
For example, when faced with the word “dog,” the patient with conduction aphasia might say things like “repo.” When faced with the word “bicycle”, he could say “bideceta”. At the word “forty-two,” he might respond with “twenty-four.” Or, for the word “sofa,” he could say “armchair.” With these examples of patients with aphasia we can get an idea of what speech would be like for one of these people.
This is one of the aphasias in which the subjects are fully aware of their difficulty, which generates great stress in them., realizing the mistakes they make and at the same time feeling a tremendous complication in correcting them. This is an additional difficulty to various aphasias, as we have seen previously.
4. Example of anomic aphasia
Continuing the list of examples of patients with aphasia, it is time to look at anomic aphasia. Anomica means “without name.” And precisely, The problem that this alteration generates in these people is the constant forgetting of certain names.which causes them to have to constantly twist their speech to try to express their idea with different words.
In that sense, the patient knows perfectly well what the concept he is thinking about is, he can even describe it, detailing it reasonably well, and yet he is not able to find the word, that is, the language label that is associated with said idea. or object.
Language fluency is maintained at normal levels, always taking into account that the subject will not be able to remember many of the names and therefore will have to modify the speech., finding alternative ways to express what you want to say. Your understanding of what other people are telling you is not altered. That is, he understands the language normally.
To see it in an example, we could think of a person who is unable to find the word television in his mind. You might say something like this: “Yesterday I watched a movie on the device where I see pictures and hear sounds.” Or: “Turn off that device.” This is a somewhat more moderate form of aphasia than Broca’s or Wernicke’s.
5. Example of global aphasia
To complete the list of examples of patients with aphasia, we must look at what is known as global aphasia. The name already tells us that this alteration is affecting all areas of language. Therefore, it is most likely that the patient cannot correctly understand this element, but also does not emit it properly.
That is to say, aphasia would have affected his language in all dimensions. This type of serious alteration comes from a significant injury to the brain, which would involve different areas related to speech and its understanding. In the most serious cases, the person will not be able to utter any words.
In these cases, communication will have to be done through non-verbal language, consisting of gestures with the face and hands, and even intonation sounds to try to provide the information that your lips cannot articulate.
