Aphasia, or problems using or understanding language
At least one fourth of all stroke survivors experience language impairments, involving the ability to speak, write, and understand spoken and written language (aphasia). A stroke-induced injury to any of the brain's language-control centers can severely impair verbal communication.
Damage to a language center located on the dominant side of the brain, known as Broca's area, causes expressive aphasia, or difficulty conveying one's thoughts through words or writing. Patients lose the ability to speak the words they are thinking and to put words together in coherent sentences.
In contrast, damage to a language center located in a rear portion of the brain, called Wernicke's area, results in receptive aphasia. People with this condition have difficulty understanding spoken or written language and often have incoherent speech. Although they can form grammatically correct sentences, their statements are often meaningless.
The most severe form of aphasia, global aphasia, is caused by extensive damage to several areas involved in language function. People with global aphasia lose nearly all their linguistic abilities; they can neither understand language nor use it to convey thought.
Anomic or amnesic aphasia occurs when there is only a minimal amount of brain damage; its effects are often quite subtle. People with anomic aphasia may simply selectively forget interrelated groups of words, such as the names of people or particular kinds of objects.
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