Aphasia

Aphasia is an acquired disorder in which the use and comprehension of language are disrupted due to neurological injury or disease but cannot be attributed to general intellectual decline or sensorimotor impairments. It is considered a multimodality disorder because individuals with aphasia experience difficulties in a variety of communication modalities, including speaking, listening, writing, reading, and, sometimes, even gesture. The number of modalities affected and the severity and types of deficits within each modality vary across individuals, reflecting the location and extent of damage to the neural structures and circuits that support language processing; for most individuals, this cortical and subcortical circuitry lies within the dominant or left hemisphere of the brain. Rather than an absolute loss of language knowledge or competence, individuals with aphasia ...