Aphasia is a condition manifesting through one's inability to use and understand language correctly. This usually takes place due to traumas caused by tumors, strokes, brain damage and similar, neurological, conditions affecting the linguistic and communicative centers of our brain. Aphasia can take place in different forms and levels. Thus, it might cause troubles in creating sentences in some people, making other completely unable to participate in their language and perceive it sensibly, let alone communicate. Reading, speaking, memorizing and writing are all linguistic aspects lost due to aphasia. All in all, it might be permanent or temporal, depending on the severity of the brain injury.
Manifestations of Aphasia
One form of this condition is fluent aphasia, and it is caused by damage to the language network in the middle section of our brain. People suffering from this form of aphasia tend to speak fluently and continuously. Nevertheless, their utterances hardly make sense and are mostly gibberish others are unable to understand. What is more, people with fluent aphasia cannot understand other people, nor can they realize that they are the ones speaking incorrectly and strangely.
Opposite of this type of aphasia, comes nonfluent aphasia. This type involves inability to speak fluently or properly due to damage located on the frontal part of our brain. Rather, these people utter small, incomplete phrases, which often make little sense. However, contrary to the previous case, people with nonfluent aphasia are usually aware of their condition and tend to get depressed because of it.
Another form many suffer from is global aphasia. This condition happens due to a large amounts of damage on the linguistic part of the brain, making one incapable of reading, writing, speaking, thinking correctly, memorizing and performing other actions connected to a language. This type usually takes place after a stroke.
Possible Treatment
Logically, the treatment depends on the type of aphasia affecting a person. Stroke induced aphasia cases are treated through speaking exercises and specific therapy, unless the damage is too big. Progressive stadiums of aphasia can even lead to a complete loss of language abilities. The only hope then is to establish a communication through gestures.
Finally, do not think that people with aphasia are intellectually impaired in any way, since they are not. They simply cannot use language. Yet, they are completely aware and reasonable, probably suffering because of this state of affairs. Thus, they need all the help they can get, while they are going through their recovery period.
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