Advanced Unit 6: Right Hemisphere Damage

Communication Disorders Associated with Right Hemisphere Damage

• Language aspects of communication including semantics and pragmatics

• Speech aspects often related to prosody

• Cognitive aspects usually related to attention, perception, orientation, agnosia, neglect

Agnosia

a rare disorder whereby a patient is unable to recognize and identify objects, persons, or sounds using one or more of their senses despite otherwise normally functioning senses

RHD etiologies

• Cerebrovascular Accidents (CVA)

• Tumors

• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

• Neurological diseases

Communication deficits with RHD

Prosopagnosia

Understanding/expressing facial expressions

Anosognosia

Prosody

Inferencing

Discourse

Anosognosia

is a condition where a person is unaware of their illness or disability,

Attention deficits with RHD

Left-neglect

Sustained attention

Selective attention

sustained attention

the ability to pay attention to something

Selective attention

the ability to filter out things and focus on one thing

Neglect definition

Defined as a failure to report, respond or orient to stimuli to the side opposite to the brain injury

what area of the brain is typically impacted to cause left-neglect?

the parietal lobe

Affect and emtional Deficits of RHD

Understanding emotions

Emotions depicted in pictures or stories

emotional tone of voice

Demonstrating their own emotions

Corporlalia

involuntary brief stereotypical vocal tics” – aka obscenities

LaPoint’s research found this was consistent across languages and cultures

Therapy includes medical management (antipsychotics) and behavioral interventions

Informal Testing of RHD

• Prosopagnosia

• Facial Affect

• Prosody

• Inferencing

• Discourse

• left Neglect

• Attention

Treatment for RHD

• Facial Affect

• Prosodic

• Discourse

• Left Neglect

• Attention

Task

 the thing you are doing to target the skill

Skill

The thing you are targeting to improve