The differences between Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia.

A summary of the main differences between Wernicke's aphasia and Broca's aphasia.

Aphasia consists of a loss of the ability to express and/or receive language due to brain injury or damage. There are different types of aphasia that affect, to a greater or lesser extent, different abilities related to the production and comprehension of speech, reading and writing, depending on the areas of the brain that are affected.

In this article we will discuss the differences between Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasiaand we will see which are their characteristics and symptoms.

Broca's aphasia: definition, characteristics and symptoms.

Broca's aphasia or expressive, motor or non-fluent aphasia, named after the French anatomist Paul Brocawho contributed to the study and understanding of the origins of this aphasia, is a language disorder caused by a lesion in the third frontal gyrus of the left hemisphere, known as Brodmann's area 44 or Broca's area.

Broca's area is a brain region related to the production and expression of language, as well as the programming of verbal behaviors; that is, it is responsible for planning the necessary movements of the mouth and face to pronounce and articulate words. It is also involved in the morphosyntactic management of language and in the selection and discrimination of appropriate sounds (inhibiting irrelevant stimuli or sounds).

People with this disorder have great difficulty articulating and verbalizing words and expressions, with a great impediment to produce grammatically complex sentences (called agrammatism); in short, they are unable to form meaningful sentences (e.g., saying "book boy" instead of "the boy is reading a book").

Also, speech becomes unproductive and not very fluent, with little verbal content.In addition, the patient tends to make mistakes and to use repetitions and crutches when speaking. Reading and writing problems also become evident, as well as difficulties in repeating sentences and pronouncing single words or short phrases (the patient invests great effort to do so).

Broca's area is connected via the arcuate fasciculus to another brain region involved in language reception, called Wernicke's area. This region is related to another type of aphasia that bears its name: Wernicke's aphasia, which we will discuss below.

Wernicke's aphasia: definition, characteristics and symptoms

Wernicke's aphasia, sensory aphasia or receptive aphasia, gets its name from the German neurologist Carl Wernickewho described this aphasia and investigated its differences with respect to motor aphasia or Broca's aphasia, is a language disorder caused by a lesion in the posterior third of the superior temporal gyrus, known as Brodmann's area 22 or Wernicke's area.

Wernicke's area is a brain region responsible for the comprehension and reception of language (oral and written). (oral and written). It covers the posterior area of the left temporal lobe. This region is activated when we pronounce words and when we listen to them, and when we plan a speech. The main function of this brain area is to identify, process and interpret phonetic sequences and the meaning of sounds.

The degree of involvement and the clinical manifestations caused by Wernicke's aphasia are variable. Some individuals may develop a total inability to understand spoken or written speech, while others may retain the ability to understand a conversation or single sentences.

The main characteristics of this neurological disorder are as follows are:

• Inability to understand language, in all its variants, even if they are words or short phrases.
• Fatigue to follow a conversation when it is lengthy and difficulty to follow the thread, especially if there are distracters (environmental noise, other conversations, etc.).
• Production of incoherent language, with phrases or words that do not exist or are irrelevant.
• Use of phonemic and semantic paraphasias; i.e., replacing letters or syllables of a word with other letters or syllables and substituting a term with another term that has a similar meaning, respectively.
• Literal interpretation of idioms, ironies or expressions with a double meaning (e.g. "not having hair on your tongue" or "being in the clouds").
• Use of neologisms (new or invented words).
• Anomia: inability to recognize or remember certain words or concepts.
• Anosognosia: the person does not perceive that he/she has a language comprehension deficit.
• Verbiage and slang: excessive increase of spontaneous language and substitution of words for unintelligible ones, respectively.
• Difficulties in the repetition and naming of words, and problems in reading and writing.

Differences between Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia

Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia both involve a language impairment due to lesions in various areas of the brain; however, there are differences between the two disorders.However, there are differences between the two disorders.

On the one hand, one of the basic differences has to do with the function and the function and location of the brain regions that are affected in both aphasia and aphasia.. In Broca's aphasia, the person's ability to express language is affected by damage to frontal areas, as opposed to Wernicke's aphasia, in which the ability to receive language is affected by damage to areas of the temporal lobe.

On the other hand, in Wernicke's aphasia there is a severe deficit in speech comprehension and the patients are not aware of it; on the contrary, in Broca's aphasia, Broca's aphasia, the patients are not aware of it, in Broca's aphasia, language comprehension is virtually unaffected and the patient has the sensation and the patient has the feeling that he/she understands speech better than he/she knows how to express him/herself.

Another notable difference between Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia has to do with speech fluency.. Patients with Broca's aphasia are not able to speak fluently, whereas persons with Wernicke's aphasia retain verbal fluency. Also, repetition ability is impaired in both aphasias, but naming problems tend to occur more in Broca's aphasia than in Wernicke's aphasia.

In relation to reading and writing, it should be noted that in both types of aphasia these processes are impaired; however, in Wernicke's aphasia graphemes and certain automatisms are usually preserved.

Finally, as far as age is concerned, it has been found that younger patients tend to be more prone to Broca's aphasia and older patients to Broca's aphasia. aphasia and older ones Wernicke's aphasia, with an average difference of 12 years between the two types of aphasia.

Bibliographic references:

• Ardila, A. (2005). The aphasias. University of Guadalajara, University Center for Social Sciences and Humanities.
• Vendrell, J. M. (2001). The aphasias: semiology and clinical types. Revista de neurología, 32(10), 980-986.