Types of Aphasia
Type | Location of Causative Lesion* | Common Causes | Speech Pattern |
|---|---|---|---|
Anomic | Lesion (usually small) anywhere in the left-hemisphere language areas | Anomia (inability to name objects) in oral language (leading to empty, circumlocutory, paraphasic speech†) and in written language, fluent speech, good auditory and reading comprehension, normal repetition | |
Broca (nonfluent, expressive, motor) | Large lesion in the left frontal or frontoparietal area, including the Broca area | Infarction Hemorrhage Trauma Tumor | Anomia in oral and written language, nonfluent speech (with slow, effortful production, short phrase length, impaired prosody, and reduced use of prepositions and conjunctions), good comprehension, impaired repetition, impaired writing (nonfluent agraphia) |
Conduction | Subcortical lesion in the left hemisphere, often under the superior temporal gyrus or under the inferior parietal lobe | Infarction Hemorrhage Tumor | Anomia (with prominent paraphasias†), otherwise fluent speech, good comprehension, impaired repetition (with frequent paraphasias), good reading comprehension Writing unaffected |
Global | Large lesion in the left frontotemporoparietal area, including the Broca and Wernicke areas | Infarction Hemorrhage Trauma Tumor | Severe anomia in oral and written language, nonfluent speech (often with sparse output), poor comprehension, impaired repetition, alexia, agraphia |
Transcortical motor | Lesion in the left frontal area, excluding the Broca and Wernicke areas | Infarction Hemorrhage Trauma Tumor | Similar to Broca aphasia except with normal repetition Articulation often unaffected |
Transcortical sensory | Lesion in the left temporoparietal area, excluding the Broca and Wernicke areas | Infarction Encephalitis Hemorrhage Trauma Tumor | Similar to Wernicke aphasia, except with normal repetition |
Wernicke (fluent, receptive, sensory) | Large lesion in the left temporoparietal area, including the Wernicke area | Infarction Tumor | Anomia in oral and written language, fluent speech (with paraphasias†, a variety of grammatical forms, but often conveying little meaning), poor auditory and written comprehension, impaired repetition, errors in reading (alexia), fluent agraphia |
* Causative lesion is in the language-dominant (usually left) hemisphere. | |||
† Paraphasic speech (paraphasia) is use of wrong or mispronounced words or words in nonsensical combinations. | |||