Examples of patients with aphasia to better understand this disorder.

Several examples of patients with aphasia to better understand this language disorder.

Aphasias can originate for various reasons and have different manifestations on the language of the affected persons.

We will go deeper into this disorder to try to understand it better, to know what are the possible causes that can generate it and the consequences they have on the affected people, supporting all of this on a series of examples of cases of aphasia that will allow us to visualize the problem.

What is aphasia and how does it originate?

If we want to know different examples of patients with aphasia, it is first necessary to know this term and its implications. Aphasia is an alteration in the individual's ability to understand or use language, and can manifest itself in many different ways.

This difficulty arises as a result of a lesion in the brain, either due to a pathology, such as a tumor, an infection, a cerebral infarction or even a degenerative disease, but can also be caused by external aggressions, such as a traumatism.but can also be caused by external aggressions, such as trauma. All 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 other regions may also be involved.

A person with a language impairment can manifest it, depending on the lesion, in very different waysThe symptoms range from difficulty or inability to find certain words, problems in repeating sequences, difficulty in pronunciation, incomprehension of words, speech disorder, and many others. We will review these possibilities by focusing on examples of patients with aphasia.

Different examples of aphasia patients

Now that we have a first basis for understanding the implications of this language disorder, we can move on to review the different examples of patients with aphasia. To do so, we are going to try to describe the main types that can be found with respect to this alteration.

1. Example of Wernicke's aphasia

The first of the examples of patients with aphasia that we are going to see is Wernicke's aphasia. It is so named because it is caused by damage to Wernicke's area which, as we have already seen, is one of the brain areas usually involved in aphasia, precisely because this region is one of those responsible for language.

A person suffering from Wernicke's aphasia will be characterized by serious difficulties in understanding language. Paradoxically, he/she is able to speak fluently, but only if we take into account the form, since the content lacks meaning..

One of the most frequent mistakes made by these patients is to substitute words that phonetically resemble each other, 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 daqui cara move palar congido". The point is that the subject would not be aware that the sentence he has said is completely unintelligible. This characteristic generates additional frustration on the patients, as they have to 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 aphasia, are the two most frequent cases of these disorders. Broca's aphasia 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 it comes to speaking, since at the motor level they have lost or have had their ability to pronounce words seriously compromised.

Therefore, the patient would emit a telegraphic type of speech, using short sentences, which require an enormous effort. Under these conditions, what we would hear when a person with Broca's aphasia tries to speak to us might be something like this: "Plate, plate, table", instead of "You have to put two plates on the table".

We can see the difference between these two examples of aphasia patients. In the first case, the speech is unintelligible, although the patient is not aware of it. However, in the second case, the person is aware of the effort and difficulty, although he or she manages to emit a message, albeit brief, in an attempt to express him or herself. The first is a sensory aphasia and the second is a motor aphasia.

3. Example of conduction aphasia

The next of the examples of aphasia patients we should review is that of conduction aphasia. This problem is due to damage to the temporal lobe. In this case, the subject would have no problem understanding language. Their difficulty would arise when trying to repeat a word or phrase..

Although they would sometimes manage to complete this task (with a lot of effort), the truth is that on most occasions they would have serious problems, and would end up using synonyms, phonologically similar words, and even words that mean nothing. In order 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". Before the word "bicycle", you could say "bideceta". For the word "forty-two", you could 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.This is one of the aphasias in which the subjects are fully aware of their difficulty, which generates great stress in them, as they realize the mistakes they make and at the same time feel a tremendous complication to correct them. This is an additional difficulty to several aphasias, as we have seen above.

4. Example of anomic aphasia

Continuing the list of examples of aphasia patients, it is time to move on to anomic aphasia. Anomic means "without name". And it is precisely that, the problem that this alteration generates in these people is the forgetfulness of certain names in a constant way, which causes that they have to turn in their speech constantly to try to express their idea with different words.This causes them to have to constantly turn their speech to try to express their idea with different words.

In this 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 that idea or object.

Fluency in language is maintained at normal levels, always bearing in mind that the subject will not be able to remember many of the names and will therefore have to modify the discourse, finding alternative ways to express that which is associated with the idea or object.finding alternative ways to express what he/she wants to say. The understanding of what other people are saying is not altered. That is to say, he/she 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. He might say something like this: "Yesterday I watched a movie on the set on which I see pictures and hear sounds". Or: "Turn off the TV set". This is a somewhat more moderate form of aphasia than Broca's or Wernicke's aphasia.

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 indicates that this disorder is affecting all areas of language. Therefore, it is most likely that the patient will not be able to understand this element correctly, but will not be able to emit it properly either.

In other words, the aphasia would have affected his language in all dimensions. This type of severe alteration comes from an important lesion in the brain, which would be involving different areas related to speech and its comprehension. In the most severe 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 his lips cannot articulate.

Bibliographical references:

• Berthier, M.L., Casares, N.G., Dávila, G. (2011). Aphasia and speech disorders. Cognitive Neurology and Aphasia Unit. Center for Medical-Health Research (CIMES). Psychobiology Area. University of Málaga.
• Cuetos, F., González-Nosti, M., Sánchez-Cortés, N., Griffith, H., Cabezas, C., García, P., Sánchez-Alemany, N. (2010). Types of anomic disorders in aphasia. Journal of Speech Therapy, Phoniatrics and Audiology. Elsevier.
• Damasio, A.R. (1992). Aphasia. New England Journal of Medicine.
• Vendrell, J.M. (2001). The aphasias: semiology and clinical types. Journal of neurology.