Aphasia is a direct resultant of a brain stroke. This we are well aware of. The language processing part of the brain is severely affected during a brain stroke. The damage takes place in the brain’s frontal lobe where in we have our language processor cells. This phenomenon has been termed as aphasia.
Expressive aphasia can be a severe language processing threat leaving the patient clueless about his own language and the languages he has learnt.
Receptive and Expressive Aphasia: Based on the affected area in the brain, aphasia may vary.
- Receptive aphasia occurs due to a damage to the left temporal lobe in the brain. The left temporal lobe normally exists to the top of the ear and next to the temple. In receptive aphasia, a patient’s language comprehension is affected. The patient can frame sentences, but the irony is that they do not understand the meaning of what they are saying. This confusion leads to a jumbled sentence formation.
- Expressive aphasia is the exact opposite of receptive aphasia. In expressive aphasia, patients can understand the sentences produced by others but they themselves are not in a state to produce meaningful sentences, be it written or spoken.
Expressive Aphasia Can Be A Severe Language Processing Threat: Expressive aphasia, also known as Broca’s aphasia (named after the scientist who first discovered aphasia) is a result of the damage that occurs in the brain’s frontal lobe, unlike receptive aphasia where the temporal lobe is damaged.
- Expressive aphasia is a severe case of speech disorder rendering the language processing system of the brain paralytic. The chances of language recovery after a brain stroke vary from person to person.
- A younger patient might heal quicker when compared to an older patient who suffers from a brain stroke. Language processors might improve either quickly (if the brain cells are only part dead) or might take years (if other brain cells retrain themselves).
Treatment: Often the problem with treating brain strokes is that the language processor threats are ignored over the other disorders caused. But, this can prove to be very dangerous.
- Stroke management is usually taken care of at hospitals by bringing the levels of blood pressure and sugar and cholesterol down. Also, doctors make sure that there is no chance for the occurrence of a second stroke by not allowing the patients to smoke or drink.
Speech therapy has not been proved to be an effective method of treating aphasia. Upon trying, may be the methods of communication in aphasia patients can be improved but a permanent cure has not yet been discovered. Thus it can be understood that expressive aphasia is a severe language processing threat.
