Aphasia and Neurogenic Language Disorders Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terminology, neuroanatomy, types of aphasia, vascular mechanisms, assessment principles, and treatment models based on the lecture notes.

Aphasia

An acquired neurogenic language disorder resulting from a stroke or brain injury that selectively impairs the cognitive system specialized for comprehending and formulating language.

Anomia

Difficulty retrieving words, resulting in naming problems.

Paraphasia

An unintentional substitution of an incorrect word or nonword for a target word.

Semantic Paraphasia

A paraphasia where an incorrect word from the same category or with related word meaning is substituted for the target word (e.g., pig to sheep).

Formal Paraphasia

A paraphasia where the substituted word is phonologically similar and shares the same sounds as the target word (e.g., dog to dock).

Mixed Paraphasia

A paraphasia involving a semantic substitution error that also meets phonological similarity to the target word (e.g., cow to cat).

Unrelated Paraphasia

A paraphasia where the substituted word is not similar in meaning or sound to the target word (e.g., banana to camp).

Nonword Paraphasia

A paraphasia resulting in a non-real word that retains some of the sounds of the target word (e.g., camel to kamer).

Agrammatism

Speech characterized by the use of nouns and main verbs while omitting function words (articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions) and bound morphemes.

Paragrammatism

Speech characterized by errors in the use of grammatical elements (such as incorrect verb tense, wrong word order, or misused prefixes and suffixes) rather than omission.

Jargon

Lengthy, fluently articulated utterances with preserved syntax that sound grammatical but make no sense to the listener.

Verbal Stereotypes

The exclusive use of a stereotypic utterance, such as a single syllable, word, or recurring phrase, as the only output a person can produce.

Dysarthria

A motor speech disorder resulting in impaired muscular control related to weakness, slowness, or incoordination of speech muscles.

Apraxia

A motor speech disorder resulting in the inability to program positioning of articulators.

Agraphia

Impairments in written expression, characterized by loss of ability to write, type, or copy letters, words, and sentences.

Alexia

Impairments in reading comprehension, characterized by inability to read or recognize words by sight.

Neologism

Severe disturbance of the phonemic integrity of a word resulting in a new, sometimes meaningless word.

Perseveration

A word that is repeated inappropriately instead of an intended target word.

Circumlocution

Talking around a target word due to a word-finding problem.

Agnosia

Inability to recognize a stimulus even though sensory transmission is intact.

Tactile Agnosia

Inability to describe characteristics or meaning of objects by touch despite intact sensory pathways.

Visual Agnosia

Inability to identify an image visually despite intact visual transmission.

Auditory Agnosia

Inability to recognize words or tell word meaning by sound.

Empty Speech

Speech characterized by substituting general words such as 'this', 'that', 'stuff', or 'thing' in place of specific target words.

Automatic Language

Language that is rote or preserved, such as counting numbers or reciting the alphabet.

Sulcus

A shallow groove on the surface of the cerebral cortex.

Fissure

A large sulcus or deep groove that divides lobes of the cerebral cortex.

Gyri

Elevated regions of the cerebral cortex bounded by fissures or sulci.

Corpus Callosum

A thick band of myelinated white matter fibers connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres.

Primary Motor Cortex

Structure located in the precentral gyrus anterior to the central sulcus that controls voluntary movements of skeletal muscle by generating motor commands.

Broca's Area

Language region located in the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus of the left hemisphere responsible for motor speech production.

Wernicke's Area

Language region located in the posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus in the left hemisphere critical for understanding written and oral language.

Heschel's Gyrus

Structure located on the dorsal surface of the superior temporal gyrus buried within the Sylvian fissure containing primary auditory cortex and auditory association cortex. may support decoding phonemes

Angular Gyrus

Structure in the posterior inferior parietal lobe involved in processing auditory/visual input, matching graphemes to phonemes, reading, writing, and calculation.

Supramarginal Gyrus

Structure in the inferior lateral parietal lobe involved in semantic and phonological processing for reading and symbolic integration for writing.

Projection Fibers

Afferent and efferent white matter fibers that travel vertically between the cerebral cortex and the brainstem or spinal cord.

Association Fibers

White matter fibers that connect different cortical areas within the same cerebral hemisphere.

Arcuate Fasciculus

An association fiber pathway connecting Broca's area and Wernicke's area.

Commissural Fibers

Interhemispheric white matter connectors running horizontally between corresponding areas of both cerebral hemispheres.

Circle of Willis

A arterial communication system between the carotid and vertebral systems at the base of the brain providing collateral circulation.

Ischemic Stroke

A type of stroke resulting from a brief or sudden loss of blood supply to the brain due to a clot or other blockage.

Embolic Stroke

An ischemic stroke caused by a blood clot formed somewhere other than in the brain that travels through the bloodstream to block a cerebral artery.

Thrombotic Stroke

An ischemic stroke caused by a blood clot developing directly within a diseased or damaged cerebral artery inside the brain.

Hemorrhagic Stroke

A type of stroke resulting from the rupture of blood vessels in the brain, causing blood to leak into brain tissue or surrounding space.

Aneurysm

A weakness in a blood vessel wall.

Non-fluent Aphasia

Aphasia characterized by limited, effortful, halting, slow speech with impaired prosody, typically resulting from lesions in the anterior dominant left hemisphere.

Fluent Aphasia

Aphasia characterized by well-articulated, fluent speech with good prosody and phrase length but containing less meaningful content, caused by posterior lesions.

Global Aphasia

Severe nonfluent aphasia affecting all modalities of expressive and receptive language due to extensive damage to the perisylvian region.

Conduction Aphasia

Fluent aphasia characterized by compromised repetition, phonemic paraphasias, and word-finding difficulties, while auditory comprehension remains generally spared.

Anomic Aphasia

Fluent aphasia characterized by a severe inability to find names of people or objects, with intact repetition, comprehension, and reading aloud.

Anosognosia

A condition in which a patient is unaware of their language disorder or deficit, often hindering rehabilitation.

Echolalia

The automatic parrot-like repetition or echoing of words and phrases spoken by another person.

Contralaterality

The neurological principle where control centers for one side of the body are located in the opposite hemisphere of the brain.

Hemispheric Specialization

The concept that each cerebral hemisphere tends to specialize in different cognitive abilities and process different kinds of information.

Neuroplasticity

The brain's ability to change at cellular/neural levels or at behavioral/system levels in response to experience or injury.

Pure Word Deafness

An auditory comprehension disorder characterized by an inability to understand, repeat, or write to dictation spoken words, while hearing, speech, and reading remain intact.

Word Form Deafness

An auditory impairment characterized by intact minimal pair discrimination but impaired auditory lexical decision-making due to a deficit at the phonological input lexicon.

Word Meaning Deafness

An auditory impairment where a patient can discriminate minimal pairs and repeat heard words, but cannot access semantic meaning from the auditory lexical form.

Semantic Feature Analysis

An anomia treatment approach focusing on meaning-based properties of nouns using a chart to list superordinate category, function, physical attributes, and associations.

Verb Network Strengthening Treatment

An anomia treatment protocol targeting verbs by prompting the generation of associated agents (who performs the action) and patients (who receives the action).

A-FROM

A framework for outcome measurement in aphasia that conceptualizes living with aphasia across four overlapping domains: severity, participation, environment, and personal identity.