Aphasia (uh-fay-zhuh)

Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that can affect one or all of the language modalities:

• Speaking
• Understanding (listening)
• Reading
• Writing

Importantly, aphasia does not impact a person’s intellect.

Aphasia occurs following a stroke, brain injury, brain tumor, or less frequently a progressive neurological disease.

The onset of aphasia is often sudden and shocking to the person with aphasia and their loved ones. Imagine being an active, contributing adult in society one day and the next, finding yourself unable to speak your most basic needs aloud. For some stroke and brain injury survivors, recovery from aphasia can happen in a matter of days. For many others, aphasia becomes a life-long disorder where one’s reality is changed forever.

Aphasia makes communicating, actively participating in home and community activities, and engaging in relationships more difficult. Just like breathing, communication is essential to our daily lives.

• Aphasia is a disorder that results from damage to areas of the brain responsible for language. For most people, these areas are on the left side of the brain.
• Aphasia is acquired and usually occurs suddenly, most often following a stroke or head injury.
• Less often, aphasia can develop slowly as the result of a brain tumor or a progressive neurological disease (primary progressive aphasia).

 

 

• There are several different types of aphasia.
•  In general, aphasia can be divided into two subcategories: fluent and nonfluent aphasia. This is defined by the number of words spoken and the number of meaningful words produced.
• To read more about specific aphasia types, click here: What is Aphasia? | Lingraphica

 

• Aphasia can manifest in several ways. A person can experience difficulties in one or more of the 4 language domains: speaking, understanding, reading and writing.
• The severity of aphasia depends on several factors, including the cause and the extent of the brain damage.
• The hallmark symptom of aphasia is difficulty recalling words. We’ve all had the occasional feeling of having a word on the “tip of our tongue”, but this feeling happens way too often for someone with aphasia, leading to frustration.

 

• Aphasia affects more than 2.5 million Americans.
• More people have aphasia than have many other common conditions, including cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, or muscular dystrophy.
•  Interestingly, about 85% of people have never heard the term ‘aphasia’.

 

• Aphasia may co-occur with speech disorders, such as dysarthria or apraxia of speech, which also result from brain damage.
• Dysarthria occurs when the muscles you use for speech are weak or you have difficulty controlling them. This negatively impacts speech intelligibility.
• Apraxia of speech (AOS) is the impaired ability to perform speech movements, despite normal muscle strength and tone. The brain has a hard time translating speech plans into motor plans.

 

• Recovery from aphasia is possible! While there is no “cure” for aphasia, the brain reorganizes following injury, and improvements in language and communication abilities can be achieved.
• Improvement can be a slow process, but people may see gains even after years or decades.

 

Definition: Primary progressive aphasia is a neurodegenerative disease in which one’s language abilities become slowly and progressively impaired.

What causes primary progressive aphasia?

• Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is different from the other types of aphasia because it is not caused by a stroke or other brain injury.
• PPA is under the dementia umbrella, specifically part of the subtype known as frontotemporal dementia (FTD). This means that there is a gradual loss of brain tissue, and symptoms will get worse over time.
• Speech and language domains are the primary areas affected in the early stages. In later stages, other symptoms related to dementia may appear, such as memory loss.

Are there different types of primary progressive aphasia?

• PPA symptoms vary based on which part of the brain’s language areas are affected (frontal, temporal, parietal areas). The condition has three subtypes, and each subtype causes different symptoms.
• The three different subtypes (or variants) of PPA are called 1) nonfluent, 2) semantic and 3) logopenic.
• Read more about the different subtypes here: Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) | AFTD (theaftd.org)

What is treatment for primary progressive aphasia?

• Individuals with PPA are fighting against a condition in which they will continue to lose their ability to speak, read, write, and/or understand what they hear.
• There are two main ways to slow the progression of language decline: continuing to exercise the language areas of your brain and acquiring new communication strategies from speech-language pathologists