By Wendy Chase, MA, CCC-SLP and Timothy Stockdale, MS CCC-SLP, RMUoHP faculty for Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology
Aphasia affects more than 2 million people in the United States, but most Americans have no real idea of what it is. Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that affects individuals’ abilities to comprehend and to produce language. While many confuse the concepts of language and speech, these ideas are quite different. Language is the foundation of what a person says, reads, writes, or understands from the speech of others. Speech, on the other hand, is a term used to describe how someone uses their tongue, lips, and teeth to modify the sounds that come from their vocal “cords” (i.e., vocal folds). While language is necessary for a person to devise meaningful speech, language and speech are distinct from one another. Because language is the foundation to producing and understanding verbal communication, an individual with aphasia may not only have problems producing spoken language, but also with writing, reading, and listening comprehension.
Aphasia does not display itself the same way for everyone. Most often, aphasia is caused by a stroke on the language-dominant side of your brain (in most people, this is the left side). Each person has a middle cerebral artery that runs through the central part of each side of their brain. If you have a stroke somewhere along this path, then you are likely to have aphasia. Where you have the stroke, however, will dictate whether or not you have more trouble understanding language or if you have more difficulty expressing yourself — with substantial variance in-between.
People with aphasia can experience a variety of symptoms. For example, one person might not be able to understand what people are saying but can talk all day long using speech that is devoid of content. Another person may be able to understand a complex conversation but be unable to create a single well-formed sentence.
While aphasia is most often caused by stroke, it can also result from any injury to the language dominant hemisphere of the brain. Some other causes include car accidents, brain tumors, and neurodegenerative disease. While aphasia generally improves – to some degree – after onset, primary progressive aphasia is a form of the disorder that causes symptoms to progressively get worse. Aphasia is not considered to be congenital or developmental; it is always caused by an acquired assault to the language center of the brain.
Aphasia is generally most severe right after a stroke, but there is often some level of improvement. People with aphasia don’t lose their memories of people, events, or facts; nor do they lose a lifetime of experience or all the things they know and understand about how to interact with people. An individual is more likely to not be able to “find” the words needed to express an internal sentiment or to combine these words to form a desired utterance.
A trained speech-language pathologist can identify aphasia and address it in a way that will improve the individual’s quality of life. The speech-language pathologist should also look at the prognostic indicators when devising a therapy plan. Consideration will be given to the cause of aphasia and how this may impact the individual’s rehabilitation potential. This consideration will help to determine the methods used in therapy –whether the focus should be rehabilitation or compensation.
People who may be interested in working with individuals with aphasia should first visit the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association website, www.asha.org, and explore the student portal to learn about the requirements. They can also speak directly with a speech-language pathologist and ask questions. Additionally, people can look into graduate speech-language pathology programs, such as the MS-SLP program at Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions.
For more information, listen to the RMUpload podcast episode: Aphasia Awareness: Illuminating a Language Disorder Hiding in Plain Sight.
