Aphasia

Broca's Aphasia

 

Broca's aphasia, also called motor aphasia, results from damage to the front portion or frontal lobe of the language-dominant area of the brain. 

Broca’s aphasia is a non-fluent type of aphasia that is commonly associated with verbal apraxia, relatively good auditory comprehension, agrammatic speech, and poor repetition. Because of the location of Broca’s area in the left hemisphere of the brain, it is also commonly associated with weakness of the arm and leg muscles of the right side of the body. Agrammatic, or telegraphic, speech means that the person with aphasia speaks mostly in nouns, and produces only a few words at a time. An example would be, “Well…..cat and…..up……..um, well, um…forget it”. The communication is non-fluent, meaning that their average sentences are five or fewer real words. Writing is typically similarly affected, and reading may be reduced.

Many people are diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia every year. With continued therapy and lots of homework, you can work towards increasing speech output, increasing reading and writing skills, and increasing repetition and comprehension skills. You can change the severity of the aphasia, as well as change to a different classification of aphasia over time. Starting after the stroke as a person with a severe Broca’s aphasia doesn’t mean that it will always be that way.