Aphasia

According with Wikipedia this word is pronounced /əˈfeɪziə/), from the Greek root word "aphatos", meaning speechless, is an acquired language disorder in which there is an impairment of any language modality. This may include difficulty in producing or comprehending spoken or written language.Traditionally, aphasia suggests the total impairment of language ability, and dysphasia a degree of impairment less than total.
Depending on the area and extent of brain damage, someone suffering from aphasia may be able to speak but not write, or vice versa, or display any of a wide variety of other deficiencies in language comprehension and production, such as being able to sing but not speak. Aphasia may co-occur with speech disorders such as dysarthria or apraxia of speech, which also result from brain damage.
1. Working from Wernicke's model of aphasia, Ludwig Lichtheim proposed five other types of aphasia those are:
2. Pure word deafness
3. Conduction aphasia
4. Apraxia of speech, which is now considered a separate disorder in itself.
5. Transcortical motor aphasia
6. Transcortical sensory aphasia
Aphasia can be divided into primary and secondary aphasia.
• Primary aphasia is due to problems with language-processing mechanisms.
• Secondary aphasia is the result of other problems, like memory impairments, attention disorders, or perceptual problems.
The cognitive neuropsychological model builds on cognitive neuropsychology. It assumes that language processing can be broken down into a number of modules, each of which has a specific function.
Signs and symptoms
People with aphasia may experience any of the following behaviors due to an acquired brain injury, although some of these symptoms may be due to related or concomitant problems such as dysarthria or apraxia and not primarily due to aphasia.
• inability to comprehend language, inability to pronounce, not due to muscle paralysis or weakness
• inability to speak spontaneously
• inability to form words
• inability to name objects
• poor enunciation
• excessive creation and use of personal neologisms
• inability to repeat a phrase
• persistent repetition of phrases
• paraphasia (substituting letters, syllables or words)
• agrammatism (inability to speak in a grammatically correct fashion)
• dysprosody (alterations in inflexion, stress, and rhythm)
• incompleted sentences
• inability to read
• inability to write
• limited verbal output
• difficulty in naming
Treatment
There is no one treatment proven to be effective for all types of aphasias. Melodic intonation therapy is often used to treat non-fluent aphasia and has proved to be very effective in some cases.