Aphasia types and lesions

Types of Aphasia 8

Wernicke’s (fluent)

  • Fluent, rapid speech that lacks meaning

  • Poor comprehension and difficulty understanding spoken language

  • Often unaware of their language mistakes

  • Damage occurs in superior temporal gyrus, supra marginal gyrus, or angular gyrus

Summary: Fluent, no comprehension, no repetition

 Broca’s (Nonfluent)

  • Most common type

  • Effortful, halting speech with short sentences and limited vocabulary

  • Relatively good comprehension (gets worse with more complexity)

  • struggles with language production

  • Lesion often in the left frontal lobe (Broca’s area)

  • Good communicators bc aware of deficit and use content words

Summary: Not fluent, comprehension intact, no repetition


Anomic Aphasia

  • Fluent speech with good grammar, but difficulty finding words (especially nouns and verbs)

  • Intact comprehension and repetition

  • Damage: temporoparietal areas (angular gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, posterior inferior temporal gyrus)

Summary: Fluent, comprehension intact, repetition 

Global Aphasia

  • Severe impairment in both production and comprehension

  • Very limited spoken language and poor understanding of others (most devastating)

  • Lesion often involves extensive damage across language areas of the left hemisphere (perisylvian areas supplied by MCA)

Summary: Not fluent, no comprehension, and cannot repeat

 

Transcortical Sensory Aphasia

  • Fluent speech with poor comprehension, similar to Wernicke’s

  • Ability to repeat words and phrases is intact

  • Impaired auditory comp

  • Damage near temporoparietal region including angular gyrus and posterior temporal lobe

Summary: fluent, no comprehension, can repeat


Transcortical sensory damage:  

Transcortical Motor Aphasia

  • Nonfluent speech with good comprehension, similar to Broca’s aphasia

  • Retains ability to repeat phrases (unlike Broca’s)

  • Lesion often anterior or superior to Broca’s area in the left frontal lobe

Summary: not fluent, comprehension intact, and can repeat


Mixed Transcortical Aphasia

  • Mixture or sensory and motor transcortical aphasia

  • Damage in watershed areas (regions that receives blood supply from cerebral artery branches)

  • Severely nonfluent, severely impaired auditory comp

  • Preserved repetition (often manifests into echolalia)

Conduction Aphasia

  • Extremely rare

  • Fluent speech and good comprehension, but significant difficulty with repetition

  • Speech often contains phonemic errors (paraphasias)

  • Lesion usually in the arcuate fasciculus, a bundle connecting Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas

Summary: fluent, comprehension intact, cannot repeat