 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(July 2022) |
| Discipline | Aphasiology |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publication details | |
| History | 1987–present |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Standard abbreviations | |
| ISO 4 | Aphasiology |
| Indexing | |
| ISSN | 0268-7038 (print) 1464-5041 (web) |
| OCLC no. | 14814735 |
Aphasiology is a monthly scientific journal covering the field of aphasias. [1]
Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in the Global North. Aphasia can also be the result of brain tumors, brain infections, or neurodegenerative diseases.
Neurolinguistics is the study of neural mechanisms in the human brain that controls the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. As an interdisciplinary field, neurolinguistics draws methods and theories from fields such as neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive science, communication disorders and neuropsychology. Researchers are drawn to the field from a variety of backgrounds, bringing along a variety of experimental techniques as well as widely varying theoretical perspectives. Much work in neurolinguistics is informed by models in psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics, and is focused on investigating how the brain can implement the processes that theoretical and psycholinguistics propose are necessary in producing and comprehending language. Neurolinguists study the physiological mechanisms by which the brain processes information related to language, and evaluate linguistic and psycholinguistic theories, using aphasiology, brain imaging, electrophysiology, and computer modeling.
Aphasiology is the study of language impairment usually resulting from brain damage, due to neurovascular accident—hemorrhage, stroke—or associated with a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, including different types of dementia. These specific language deficits, termed aphasias, may be defined as impairments of language production or comprehension that cannot be attributed to trivial causes such as deafness or oral paralysis. A number of aphasias have been described, but two are best known: expressive aphasia and receptive aphasia.
Anomic aphasia is a mild, fluent type of aphasia where individuals have word retrieval failures and cannot express the words they want to say. By contrast, anomia is a deficit of expressive language, and a symptom of all forms of aphasia, but patients whose primary deficit is word retrieval are diagnosed with anomic aphasia. Individuals with aphasia who display anomia can often describe an object in detail and maybe even use hand gestures to demonstrate how the object is used, but cannot find the appropriate word to name the object. Patients with anomic aphasia have relatively preserved speech fluency, repetition, comprehension, and grammatical speech.
Brodmann area 47, or BA47, is part of the frontal cortex in the human brain. It curves from the lateral surface of the frontal lobe into the ventral (orbital) frontal cortex. It is below areas BA10 and BA45, and beside BA11. This cytoarchitectonic region most closely corresponds to the gyral region the orbital part of inferior frontal gyrus, although these regions are not equivalent. Pars orbitalis is not based on cytoarchitectonic distinctions, and rather is defined according to gross anatomical landmarks. Despite a clear distinction, these two terms are often used liberally in peer-reviewed research journals.
CarlWernicke was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also the study of receptive aphasia, both of which are commonly associated with Wernicke's name and referred to as Wernicke encephalopathy and Wernicke's aphasia, respectively. His research, along with that of Paul Broca, led to groundbreaking realizations of the localization of brain function, specifically in speech. As such, Wernicke's area has been named after the scientist.
Transcortical motor aphasia (TMoA), also known as commissural dysphasia or white matter dysphasia, results from damage in the anterior superior frontal lobe of the language-dominant hemisphere. This damage is typically due to cerebrovascular accident (CVA). TMoA is generally characterized by reduced speech output, which is a result of dysfunction of the affected region of the brain. The left hemisphere is usually responsible for performing language functions, although left-handed individuals have been shown to perform language functions using either their left or right hemisphere depending on the individual. The anterior frontal lobes of the language-dominant hemisphere are essential for initiating and maintaining speech. Because of this, individuals with TMoA often present with difficulty in speech maintenance and initiation.
Telerehabilitation (or e-rehabilitation is the delivery of rehabilitation services over telecommunication networks and the internet. Telerehabilitation allows patients to interact with providers remotely and can be used both to assess patients and to deliver therapy. Fields of medicine that utilize telerehabilitation include: physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, audiology, and psychology. Therapy sessions can be individual or community-based. Types of therapy available include motor training exercises, speech therapy, virtual reality, robotic therapy, goal setting, and group exercise.
Agrammatism is a characteristic of non-fluent aphasia. Individuals with agrammatism present with speech that is characterized by containing mainly content words, with a lack of function words. For example, when asked to describe a picture of children playing in the park, the affected individual responds with, "trees..children..run." People with agrammatism may have telegraphic speech, a unique speech pattern with simplified formation of sentences, akin to that found in telegraph messages. Deficits in agrammaticism are often language-specific, however—in other words, "agrammaticism" in speakers of one language may present differently from in speakers of another.
John Charles Marshall was a British cognitive neuropsychologist, who played a pioneering role in the establishment of cognitive neuropsychology as a discipline, and in modeling of language disorders and dyslexia. He emphasized the role of representation in understanding the mind, stating, for instance that "the primary goal of neurolinguistics can be simply stated: the discipline seeks to understand the form of representation of language in the human brain".
The comprehensive aphasia test (CAT) was created by Kate Swinburn, Gillian Porter and David Howard. The CAT is a new test for people who have acquired aphasia, the impairment of language ability. The comprehensive assessment can be completed over one or two sessions. The test contains a cognitive screening, a language battery and a disability questionnaire. The authors of the comprehensive aphasia test take account of current linguistic and psychological theory and other variable that impact aphasic performance. The CAT was published in 2005 and was the first new aphasia test in English for 20 years. The test is designed to (1) screen for associated cognitive deficits,(2) assess language impairment in people with aphasia, (3) investigate the consequences of the aphasia on the individual's lifestyle and emotional well-being, and (4) monitor changes in the aphasia and its consequences over time.
Deep dyslexia is a form of dyslexia that disrupts reading processes. Deep dyslexia may occur as a result of a head injury, stroke, disease, or operation. This injury results in the occurrence of semantic errors during reading and the impairment of nonword reading.
Paragrammatism is the confused or incomplete use of grammatical structures, found in certain forms of speech disturbance. Paragrammatism is the inability to form grammatically correct sentences. It is characteristic of fluent aphasia, most commonly receptive aphasia. Paragrammatism is sometimes called "extended paraphasia," although it is different from paraphasia. Paragrammatism is roughly synonymous with "word salad," which concerns the semantic coherence of speech rather than its production.
Trevor Harley is emeritus chair of Cognitive Psychology. His primary research is in the psychology of language and consciousness. From 2003 until 2016 he was Head and Dean of the School of Psychology at the University of Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom. He is author of several books, including "The Psychology of Language", currently in its fourth edition, published by Psychology Press, "Talking the talk", a book about the psychology of language (psycholinguistics) aimed at a more general audience, "The Science of Consciousness", a general text on consciousness, and "The Psychology of Weather", about how weather affects behaviour. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society.
Jargon aphasia is a type of fluent aphasia in which an individual's speech is incomprehensible, but appears to make sense to the individual. Persons experiencing this condition will either replace a desired word with another that sounds or looks like the original one, or has some other connection to it, or they will replace it with random sounds. Accordingly, persons with jargon aphasia often use neologisms, and may perseverate if they try to replace the words they can not find with sounds.
The Boston Naming Test (BNT), introduced in 1983 by Edith Kaplan, Harold Goodglass and Sandra Weintraub, is a widely used neuropsychological assessment tool to measure confrontational word retrieval in individuals with aphasia or other language disturbance caused by stroke, Alzheimer's disease, or other dementing disorder. A common and debilitating feature is anomic aphasia, an impairment in the ability to name objects. The BNT contains 60 line drawings graded in difficulty. Patients with anomia often have greater difficulties with the naming of not only difficult and low frequency objects but also easy and high frequency objects. Naming difficulties may be rank ordered along a continuum. Items are rank ordered in terms of their ability to be named, which is correlated with their frequency. This type of picture-naming test is also useful in the examination of children with learning disabilities and the evaluation of brain-injured adults.
Finger agnosia, first defined in 1924 by Josef Gerstmann, is the loss in the ability to distinguish, name, or recognize the fingers—not only the patient's own fingers, but also the fingers of others, and drawings and other representations of fingers. It is one of a tetrad of symptoms in Gerstmann syndrome, although it is also possible for finger agnosia to exist on its own without any other disorders. Usually, lesions to the left angular gyrus and posterior parietal areas can lead to finger agnosia.
Surface dyslexia is a type of dyslexia, or reading disorder. According to Marshall & Newcombe's (1973) and McCarthy & Warrington's study (1990), patients with this kind of disorder cannot recognize a word as a whole due to the damage of the left parietal or temporal lobe. Individuals with surface dyslexia are unable to recognize a word as a whole word and retrieve its pronunciation from memory. Rather, individuals with surface dyslexia rely on pronunciation rules. Thus, patients with this particular type of reading disorder read non-words fluently, like "yatchet", but struggle with words that defy pronunciation rules. For example, a patient with surface dyslexia can correctly read regular words like "mint", but will fail when presented with a word that disobeys typical pronunciation rules, like "pint". Often, semantic knowledge is preserved in individuals with surface dyslexia.
The trait of backward speech is described as an ability to spontaneously and accurately reverse words. Two strategies of word reversal were reported: reversal according to the phonetic structure of the words or reversal according to their spelling. In the 1980s Nelson Cowan hypothesized that this ability is afforded by an extraordinary working memory. Recent studies have provided evidence that the working memory is indeed involved in this ability and further suggested that genetic factors may contribute to this trait.
Brenda Carla Rapp professor and chair of the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University. In 2010, she was appointed joint editor-in-chief of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology.
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