In neuroscience and psychology, the term language center refers collectively to the areas of the brain which serve a particular function for speech processing and production. Language is a core system, which gives humans the capacity to solve difficult problems and provides them with a unique type of social interaction. Language allows individuals to attribute symbols to specific concepts and display them through sentences and phrases that follow proper grammatical rules. Moreover, speech is the mechanism in which language is orally expressed.
This is a glossary of medical terms related to communications disorders which are conditions that could have the potential to negatively impact the level at which an individual can hear, understand, and respond to others.
A communication disorder is any disorder that affects an individual's ability to comprehend, detect, or apply language and speech to engage in discourse effectively with others. The delays and disorders can range from simple sound substitution to the inability to understand or use one's native language.
Apraxia is a motor disorder caused by damage to the brain which causes difficulty with motor planning to perform tasks or movements. The nature of the damage determines the disorder's severity, and the absence of sensory loss or paralysis helps to explain the level of difficulty. Children may be born with apraxia; its cause is unknown, and symptoms are usually noticed in the early stages of development. Apraxia occurring later in life, known as acquired apraxia, is typically caused by traumatic brain injury, stroke, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, brain tumor, or other neurodegenerative disorders. There are multiple types of apraxia, categorized by the specific ability and/or body part affected.
Speech disorders or speech impairments are a type of communication disorder where normal speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute. Speech disorders affect roughly 11.5% of the US population. Speech is a complex process that requires precise timing, nerve and muscle control. The ability to understand language and produce speech is coordinated by the brain. A person who suffers from a stroke, an accident or birth defect may have speech and language problems.
Expressive language disorder is a communication disorder in which there are difficulties with verbal and written expression. It is a specific language impairment characterized by an ability to use expressive spoken language that is markedly below the appropriate level for the mental age, but with a language comprehension that is within normal limits. There can be problems with vocabulary, producing complex sentences, and remembering words, and there may or may not be abnormalities in articulation.
Hypotonia is a state of low muscle tone, often involving reduced muscle strength. Hypotonia is not a specific medical disorder, but a potential manifestation of many different diseases and disorders that affect motor nerve control by the brain or muscle strength. Hypotonia is a lack of resistance to passive movement, whereas muscle weakness results in impaired active movement. Central hypotonia originates from the central nervous system, while peripheral hypotonia is related to problems within the spinal cord, peripheral nerves and/or skeletal muscles. Severe hypotonia in infancy is commonly known as floppy baby syndrome. Recognizing hypotonia, even in early infancy, is usually relatively straightforward, but diagnosing the underlying cause can be difficult and often unsuccessful. The long-term effects of hypotonia on a child's development and later life depend primarily on the severity of the muscle weakness and the nature of the cause. Some disorders have a specific treatment but the principal treatment for most hypotonia of idiopathic or neurologic cause is physical therapy and/or occupational therapy for remediation.
Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder resulting from neurological injury of the motor component of the motor–speech system and is characterized by poor articulation of phonemes. In other words, it is a condition in which problems effectively occur with the muscles that help produce speech, often making it very difficult to pronounce words. It is unrelated to problems with understanding language, although a person can have both. Any of the speech subsystems can be affected, leading to impairments in intelligibility, audibility, naturalness, and efficiency of vocal communication. Dysarthria that has progressed to a total loss of speech is referred to as anarthria. The term dysarthria is from New Latin, dys- "dysfunctional, impaired" and arthr- "joint, vocal articulation".
Formulaic language is a linguistic term for verbal expressions that are fixed in form, often non-literal in meaning with attitudinal nuances, and closely related to communicative-pragmatic context. Along with idioms, expletives and proverbs, formulaic language includes pause fillers and conversational speech formulas.
Speech-language pathology, also known as communication sciences and disorders is a fast-growing profession that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, offers about 120,000 jobs in the United States alone. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has 166,000 members, who are audiologists, speech-language pathologists, speech, language, and hearing scientists, and speech language pathology assistants. To begin practice in most areas of the United States, a prospective therapist must have an undergraduate degree and a graduate degree in speech pathology. A 9-month, supervised clinical fellowship year is then completed, after which the Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC) in speech pathology from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) is granted. In order to be certified clinically competent the Praxis exam must be passed. In some areas the master's degree is not required. In some areas additional requirements must be met: an additional certification from ASHA in school speech pathology and audiology, certification in special education instruction, and/or and must have passed any other federal or state examinations for licensure and certification. To retain the ASHA license a minimum amount of continuing education must be completed. A doctorate is not currently required, but that may change, as it has for many other areas of therapy. Speech-language pathology overlaps with many educational disciplines, such as communication sciences, linguistics, special education, and health care. This article will explore some of the fundamental elements of speech-language pathology, looking at the career in an educational setting.
Dysprosody, which may manifest as pseudo-foreign accent syndrome, refers to a disorder in which one or more of the prosodic functions are either compromised or eliminated completely.
Developmental coordination disorder (DCD), also known as developmental motor coordination disorder, developmental dyspraxia or simply dyspraxia, is a chronic neurological disorder beginning in childhood. It is also known to affect planning of movements and co-ordination as a result of brain messages not being accurately transmitted to the body. Impairments in skilled motor movements per a child's chronological age interfere with activities of daily living. A diagnosis of DCD is then reached only in the absence of other neurological impairments such as cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson's disease.
Muteness or mutism is defined as an absence of speech while conserving or maintaining the ability to hear the speech of others. Mutism is typically understood as an inability to speak on the part of a child or an adult due to an observed lack of speech from the point of view of others who know them. Such observers commonly include a mute person's family members, caregivers, teachers, and health professionals like doctors or speech and language pathologists. Muteness may not be a permanent condition, depending upon etiology (cause). In general, someone who is mute may be mute for one of several different reasons: organic, psychological, developmental/neurological trauma. For children, a lack of speech may be developmental, neurological, psychological, or due to a physical disability or a communication disorder. For adults who previously had speech and then became unable to speak, loss of speech may be due to injury, disease, termed aphasia, or surgery affecting areas of the brain needed for speech. Loss of speech in adults may occur rarely for psychological reasons.
A speech sound disorder (SSD) is a speech disorder in which some speech sounds in a child's language are not produced, are not produced correctly, or are not used correctly. The term "protracted phonological development" is sometimes preferred when describing children's speech, to emphasize the continuing development while acknowledging the delay.
Apraxia of speech (AOS) is an acquired oral motor speech disorder affecting an individual's ability to translate conscious speech plans into motor plans, which results in limited and difficult speech ability. By the definition of apraxia, AOS affects volitional movement patterns, however AOS usually also affects automatic speech.
Speech and language impairment are basic categories that might be drawn in issues of communication involve hearing, speech, language, and fluency.
Athetoid cerebral palsy, or dyskinetic cerebral palsy, is a type of cerebral palsy primarily associated with damage, like other forms of CP, to the basal ganglia in the form of lesions that occur during brain development due to bilirubin encephalopathy and hypoxic–ischemic brain injury. Unlike spastic or ataxic cerebral palsies, ADCP is characterized by both hypertonia and hypotonia, due to the affected individual's inability to control muscle tone. Clinical diagnosis of ADCP typically occurs within 18 months of birth and is primarily based upon motor function and neuroimaging techniques. While there are no cures for ADCP, some drug therapies as well as speech, occupational therapy, and physical therapy have shown capacity for treating the symptoms.
Oculomotor apraxia (OMA), is the absence or defect of controlled, voluntary, and purposeful eye movement. It was first described in 1952 by the American ophthalmologist David Glendenning Cogan. People with this condition have difficulty moving their eyes horizontally and moving them quickly. The main difficulty is in saccade initiation, but there is also impaired cancellation of the vestibulo-ocular reflex. Patients have to turn their head in order to compensate for the lack of eye movement initiation in order to follow an object or see objects in their peripheral vision, but they often exceed their target. There is controversy regarding whether OMA should be considered an apraxia, since apraxia is the inability to perform a learned or skilled motor action to command, and saccade initiation is neither a learned nor a skilled action.
Developmental verbal dyspraxia (DVD), also known as childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and developmental apraxia of speech (DAS), is a condition in which children have problems saying sounds, syllables and words. This is not because of muscle weakness or paralysis. The brain has problems planning to move the body parts needed for speech. The child knows what they want to say, but their brain has difficulty coordinating the muscle movements necessary to say those words.
Flaccid dysarthria is a motor speech disorder resulting from damage to peripheral nervous system or lower motor neuron system. Depending on which nerves are damaged, flaccid dysarthria affects respiration, phonation, resonance, and articulation. It also causes weakness, hypotonia, and diminished reflexes. Perceptual effects of flaccid dysarthria can include hypernasality, imprecise consonant productions, breathiness of voice, and affected nasal emission.
