Aphasia: The Culture Leech

Each year, about 795,000 people suffer a stroke (Internet Stroke Center). Strokes occur when a blood clot in the brain prevents blood from reaching the brain, causing cells within the brain begin to die and eventually causing brain damage. Strokes range in severity and thus, range in
their after symptoms, those who experience small strokes may lose feeling or experience weakness on one side of their body, while those who suffer larger strokes may experience damage to the left hemisphere of their brain. Damage to this area of the brain can lead to an acquired speech disorder called Aphasia. Aphasia impairs the sufferer’s ability to produce speech effectively to convey meaning, sometimes resulting in a complete inability to communicate verbally. Aphasia also prevents comprehension and effective reading and writing (NIDCD). Sufferers of aphasia are able to go through treatment to reduce the effects of their linguistic ability loss, but as a result of their condition as of now they cannot truly return to normal life and be a part of society in the same way that they were before. Because of this, scientists are striving to use advancing technology and research into the inner workings of the brain and the regenerative techniques used by stem cell researchers, aphasia sufferers will be able to recover their linguistic and comprehension faculties.

In addition to strokes, many other things can cause a person to develop aphasia, things like a blow to the head, a brain tumor, an infection of the brain, aphasia can even occur in Alzheimer’s and dementia patients as a result of their brain cell loss. Men and women are equally affected by aphasia and it usually occurs in elderly or middle-aged persons, generally those who are at a higher risk for stroke or brain cancer. Symptoms of aphasia vary from complete loss of language skills to mild lexical choice problems, depending on the area of the brain affected and the severity of the damage the speech centers of the brain can be affected in several different ways, thus a classification system is necessary to accurately diagnose and treat those who develop this terrible condition (NIDCD).

Generally, there are two agreed upon umbrella terms in the field of clinical aphasia diagnosis: fluent and non fluent. Within these umbrella terms various forms of aphasia are categorized based on the degree and type of symptoms that patients show. Several types of aphasia include Broca’s Aphasia, Wernicke’s Aphasia, global aphasia, Transcordal Motor aphasia, anomic, conduction, the list goes on (Wikipedia). Each of these types of aphasia contain different symptoms and each can have its own variability in terms of the severity of the symptoms. As one can see the range and development of aphasia is widespread, and no two aphasiacs are the same when it comes to their symptoms, which makes clinical diagnosis and treatment through verbal exercises and therapy difficult to do. Often these types of therapies yield less than astonishing results, and the sufferers are stuck dealing with their conditions for the rest of their lives.