Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder that impairs a person’s ability to process language but does not affect intelligence. When a person suffers from aphasia, there is an impairment in the ability of the person when speaking and understanding others. Importantly, aphasia does not impair the person’s intelligence.
Aphasia results from brain damage or injury to language parts of the brain usually after a stroke and it has been observed that stroke is one of the leading cause of death and disability in India. According to a study by Tonkonogy (1986), stroke is a common cause of aphasia. Significantly, among 60 diseases and 15 health conditions, it was found that aphasia showed the largest negative relationship with the health-related quality of life measure in long-term patient care settings as stated by Lam and Wodchis in their 2010 work.
It may be noted that Aphasia may affect individuals at different levels, either as mild or severe versions. A person may be able to converse yet have trouble finding the right word or understanding complex conversations in case of mild aphasia. In this case, it may affect mainly a single aspect of language use, such as the ability to retrieve the names of objects, or the ability to put words together into sentences, or the ability to read
However in case of severe aphasia person’s ability to communicate is limited. Here, the person may say very little and may not participate in or understand any conversation at all.
Commonly, however, even multiple aspects of communication are impaired, while some channels remain accessible for a limited exchange of information. Various types of aphasia exist that affect fluency, comprehension, and repetition as given below.
Image courtesy: https://www.aphasia.org/aphasia-definitions/
Kumudha Health Tech is developing an Android App for the diagnosis and treatment of Aphaia. It’s named MATApp –
