Following are some precautions that should be taken to avoid aphasia, by decreasing the risk of stroke, the main cause of aphasia:

- Exercising regularly

- Eating a healthy diet

- Keeping alcohol consumption low and avoiding tobacco use

- Controlling blood pressure

In addition to active speech therapy, pharmaceuticals have also been considered as a useful treatment for expressive aphasia. This area of study is relatively new and much research continues to be conducted.

The following drugs have been suggested for use in treating aphasia and their efficacy has been studied in control studies.

- Bromocriptine – acts on Catecholamine Systems

- Piracetam – mechanism not fully understood, but most likely interacts with cholinergic and glutamatergic receptors, among others

- Cholinergic drugs (Donepezil, Aniracetam, Bifemelane) – acts on acetylcholine systems

- Dopaminergic psychostimulants: (Dexamphetamine, Methylphenidate)

The most effect has been shown by piracetam and amphetamine, which may increase cerebral plasticity and result in an increased capability to improve language function. It has been seen that piracetam is most effective when treatment is begun immediately following stroke. When used in chronic cases it has been much less efficient.

Bromocriptine has been shown by some studies to increase verbal fluency and word retrieval with therapy than with just therapy alone. Furthermore, its use seems to be restricted to non-fluent aphasia.

Donepezil has shown a potential for helping chronic aphasia.

No study has established irrefutable evidence that any drug is an effective treatment for aphasia therapy. Furthermore, no study has shown any drug to be specific for language recovery. Comparison between the recovery of language function and other motor function using any drug has shown that improvement is due to a global increase plasticity of neural networks.

When addressing Wernicke’s aphasia, according to Bakheit et al. (2007), the lack of awareness of the language impairments, a common characteristic of Wernicke’s aphasia, may impact the rate and extent of therapy outcomes. Klebic et al. (2011) suggests that people benefit from continuing therapy upon discharge from the hospital to ensure generalization. Robey (1998) determined that at least 2 hours of treatment per week is recommended for making significant language gains. Spontaneous recovery may cause some language gains, but without speech-language therapy, the outcomes can be half as strong as those with therapy.

When addressing Broca’s aphasia, better outcomes occur when the person participates in therapy, and treatment is more effective than no treatment for people in the acute period. Two or more hours of therapy per week in acute and post-acute stages produced the greatest results. High intensity therapy was most effective, and low intensity therapy was almost equivalent to no therapy.

People with global aphasia are sometimes referred to as having irreversible aphasic syndrome, often making limited gains in auditory comprehension, and recovering no functional language modality with therapy. With this said, people with global aphasia may retain gestural communication skills that may enable success when communicating with conversational partners within familiar conditions. Process-oriented treatment options are limited, and people may not become competent language users as readers, listeners, writers, or speakers no matter how extensive therapy is. However, people’s daily routines and quality of life can be enhanced with reasonable and modest goals. After the first month, there is limited to no healing to language abilities of most people. There is a grim prognosis leaving 83% who were globally aphasic after the first month they will remain globally aphasic at the first year. Some people are so severely impaired that their existing process-oriented treatment approaches offer signs of progress, and therefore cannot justify the cost of therapy.

Perhaps due to the relative rareness of conduction aphasia, few studies have specifically studied the effectiveness of therapy for people with this type of aphasia. From the studies performed, results showed that therapy can help to improve specific language outcomes. One intervention that has had positive results is auditory repetition training. Kohn et al. (1990) reported that drilled auditory repetition training related to improvements in spontaneous speech, Francis et al. (2003) reported improvements in sentence comprehension, and Kalinyak-Fliszar et al. (2011) reported improvements in auditory-visual short-term memory.

Most acute cases of aphasia recover some or most skills by working with a speech-language pathologist. Recovery and improvement can continue for years after the stroke. After the onset of Aphasia, there is approximately a six-month period of spontaneous recovery; during this time, the brain is attempting to recover and repair the damaged neurons. Improvement varies widely, depending on the aphasia's cause, type, and severity. Recovery also depends on the person's age, health, motivation, handedness, and educational level.

There is no one treatment proven to be effective for all types of aphasias. The reason that there is no universal treatment for aphasia is because of the nature of the disorder and the various ways it is presented, as explained in the above sections. Aphasia is rarely exhibited identically, implying that treatment needs to be catered specifically to the individual. Studies have shown that, although there is no consistency on treatment methodology in literature, there is a strong indication that treatment in general has positive outcomes. Therapy for aphasia ranges from increasing functional communication to improving speech accuracy, depending on the person's severity, needs and support of family and friends. Group therapy allows individuals to work on their pragmatic and communication skills with other individuals with aphasia, which are skills that may not often be addressed in individual one-on-one therapy sessions. It can also help increase confidence and social skills in a comfortable setting.

Evidence dose not support the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for improving aphasia after stroke.

Specific treatment techniques include the following:

- Copy and Recall Therapy (CART) - repetition and recall of targeted words within therapy may strengthen orthographic representations and improve single word reading, writing, and naming

- Visual Communication Therapy (VIC) - the use of index cards with symbols to represent various components of speech

- Visual Action Therapy (VAT) - typically treats individuals with global aphasia to train the use of hand gestures for specific items

- Functional Communication Treatment (FCT) - focuses on improving activities specific to functional tasks, social interaction, and self-expression

- Promoting Aphasic's Communicative Effectiveness (PACE) - a means of encouraging normal interaction between people with aphasia and clinicians. In this kind of therapy the focus is on pragmatic communication rather than treatment itself. People are asked to communicate a given message to their therapists by means of drawing, making hand gestures or even pointing to an object

- Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT) - aims to use the intact melodic/prosodic processing skills of the right hemisphere to help cue retrieval of words and expressive language

- Other - i.e. drawing as a way of communicating, trained conversation partners

Semantic feature analysis (SFA) -a type of aphasia treatment that targets word-finding deficits. It is based on the theory that neural connections can strengthened by using using related words and phrases that are similar to the target word, to eventually activate the target word in the brain. SFA can be implemented in multiple forms such as verbally, written, using picture cards, etc. The SLP provides prompting questions to the individual with aphasia in order for the person to name the picture provided. Studies show that SFA is an effective intervention for improving confrontational naming.

Melodic intonation therapy is used to treat non-fluent aphasia and has proved to be effective in some cases. However, there is still no evidence from randomized controlled trials confirming the efficacy of MIT in chronic aphasia. MIT is used to help people with aphasia vocalize themselves through speech song, which is then transferred as a spoken word. Good candidates for this therapy include people who have had left hemisphere strokes, non-fluent aphasias such as Broca's, good auditory comprehension, poor repetition and articulation, and good emotional stability and memory. An alternative explanation is that the efficacy of MIT depends on neural circuits involved in the processing of rhythmicity and formulaic expressions (examples taken from the MIT manual: “I am fine,” “how are you?” or “thank you”); while rhythmic features associated with melodic intonation may engage primarily left-hemisphere subcortical areas of the brain, the use of formulaic expressions is known to be supported by right-hemisphere cortical and bilateral subcortical neural networks.

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), involving family with the treatment of an Aphasic loved one is ideal for all involved, because while it will no doubt assist in their recovery, it will also make it easier for members of the family to learn how best to communicate with them.

According to Bates et al. (2005), "the primary goal of rehabilitation is to prevent complications, minimize impairments, and maximize function". The topics of intensity and timing of intervention are widely debated across various fields. Results are contradictory: some studies indicate better outcomes with early intervention, while other studies indicate starting therapy too early may be detrimental to the patient's recovery. Recent research suggests, that therapy be functional and focus on communication goals that are appropriate for the patient's individual lifestyle.

Specific treatment considerations for working with individuals with Wernicke's aphasia (or those who exhibit deficits in auditory comprehension) include using familiar materials,using shorter and slower utterances when speaking, giving direct instructions, and using repetition as needed.

Neuroplasticity: Role in Recovery

Neuroplasticity is defined as the brain's ability to reorganize itself, lay new pathways, and rearrange existing ones, as a result of experience. Neuronal changes after damage to the brain such as collateral sprouting, increased activation of the homologous areas, and map extension demonstrate the brain's neuroplastic abilities. According to Thomson, "Portions of the right hemisphere, extended left brain sites, or both have been shown to be recruited to perform language functions after brain damage. All of the neuronal changes recruit areas not originally or directly responsible for large portions of linguistic processing. Principles of neuroplasticity have been proven effective in neurorehabilitation after damage to the brain. These principles include: incorporating multiple modalities into treatment to create stronger neural connections, using stimuli that evoke positive emotion, linking concepts with simultaneous and related presentations, and finding the appropriate intensity and duration of treatment for each individual patient.

Currently, there is no standard treatment for expressive aphasia. Most aphasia treatment is individualized based on a patient's condition and needs as assessed by a speech language pathologist. Patients go through a period of spontaneous recovery following brain injury in which they regain a great deal of language function.

In the months following injury or stroke, most patients receive traditional treatment for a few hours per day. Among other exercises, patients practice the repetition of words and phrases. Mechanisms are also taught in traditional treatment to compensate for lost language function such as drawing and using phrases that are easier to pronounce.

Emphasis is placed on establishing a basis for communication with family and caregivers in everyday life. Treatment is individualized based on the patient's own priorities, along with the family's input.

A patient may have the option of individual or group treatment. Although less common, group treatment has been shown to have advantageous outcomes. Some types of group treatments include family counseling, maintenance groups, support groups and treatment groups.

There are clinical trials being done to further research for treatments. At the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) they support research for rare diseases like agnosia. Some organizations that are recruiting for trials are using clincaltrials.gov and give status updates on the trials.

Agraphia cannot be directly treated, but individuals can be rehabilitated to regain some of their previous writing abilities.

For the management of phonological agraphia, individuals are trained to memorize key words, such as a familiar name or object, that can then help them form the grapheme for that phoneme. Management of allographic agraphia can be as simple as having alphabet cards so the individual can write legibly by copying the correct letter shapes. There are few rehabilitation methods for apraxic agraphia; if the individual has considerably better hand control and movement with typing than they do with handwriting, then they can use technological devices. Texting and typing do not require the same technical movements that handwriting does; for these technological methods, only spatial location of the fingers to type is required. If copying skills are preserved in an individual with apraxic agraphia, repeated copying may help shift from the highly intentional and monitored hand movements indicative of apraxic agraphia to a more automated control.

Micrographia is a condition that can occur with the development of other disorders, such as Parkinson's disease, and is when handwriting becomes illegible because of small writing. For some individuals, a simple command to write bigger eliminates the issue.

- Anagram and Copy Treatment (ACT) uses the arrangement of component letters of target words and then repeated copying of the target word. This is similar to the CART; the main difference is that the target words for ACT are specific to the individual. Target words that are important in the life of the individual are emphasized because people with deep or global agraphias do not typically have the same memory for the words as other people with agraphia may. Writing can be even more important to these people as it can cue spoken language. ACT helps in this by facilitating the relearning of a set of personally relevant written words for use in communication.

- Copy and Recall Treatment (CART) method helps to reestablish the ability to spell specific words that are learned through repeated copying and recall of target words. CART is more likely to be successful in treating lexical agraphia when a few words are trained to mastery than when a large group of unrelated words is trained. Words chosen can be individualized to the patient, which makes treatment more personalized.

- Graphemic buffer uses the training of specific words to improve spelling. Cueing hierarchies and copy and recall method of specific words are used, to work the words into the short-term memory loop, or graphemic buffer. The segmentation of longer words into shorter syllables helps bring words into short-term memory.

- Problem solving approach is used as a self-correcting method for phonological errors. The individual sounds out the word and attempts to spell it, typically using an electronic dictionary-type device that indicates correct spelling. This method takes advantage of the preserved sound-to-letter correspondences when they are intact. This approach may improve access to spelling memory, strengthen orthographic representations, or both.

There is no method available to completely cure anomic aphasia. However, there are treatments to help improve word-finding skills.

Although a person with anomia may find it difficult to recall many types of words such as common nouns, proper nouns, verbs, etc., many studies have shown that treatment for object words, or nouns, has shown promise in rehabilitation research. The treatment includes visual aids, such as pictures, and the patient is asked to identify the object or activity. However, if that is not possible, then the patient is shown the same picture surrounded by words associated with the object or activity. Throughout the process, positive encouragement is provided. The treatment shows an increase in word-finding during treatment; however, word identifying decreased two weeks after the rehabilitation period. Therefore, it shows that rehabilitation effort needs to be continuous for word-finding abilities to improve from the baseline. The studies show that verbs are harder to recall or repeat, even with rehabilitation.

Other methods in treating anomic aphasia include Circumlocution Induced Naming therapy (CIN), wherein the patient uses circumlocution to assist with his or her naming rather than just being told to name the item pictured after given some sort of cue. Results suggest that the patient does better in properly naming objects when undergoing this therapy because CIN strengthens the weakened link between semantics and phonology for patients with anomia, since they often know what an object is used for but cannot verbally name it.

Anomia is often burdensome on the families and friends of those suffering from it. One way to overcome this burden is computer-based treatment models, effective especially when used with clinical therapy. Leemann et al. provided anomic patients with computerized-assisted therapy (CAT) sessions, along with traditional therapy sessions using treatment lists of words. Some of the patients received a drug known to help relieve symptoms of anomia (levodopa) while others received a placebo. The researchers found that the drug had no significant effects on improvement with the treatment lists, but almost all of the patients improved after the CAT sessions. They concluded that this form of computerized treatment is effective in increasing naming abilities in anomic patients.

Additionally, one study researched the effects of using "excitatory (anodal) transcranial direct current stimulation" over the right temporo-parietal cortex, a brain area that seems to correlate to language. The electrical stimulation seemed to enhance language training outcome in patients with chronic aphasia.

The only way to treat aphasia is with speech and language therapy (SLT). It will not completely restore the person’s prior level of communication, but SLT can lead to a massive improvement of jargon aphasia. Recipients of this treatment typically achieve better use of residual language abilities, improved language skills, and the ability to communicate in a different way by making up for missing words in their speech[2].

One specific method that has shown to lead to improvements with certain symptoms is “phonological component analysis”, or PCA for short. Participants in PCA therapy tend to improve in the ability to name specific items that they are test on, as well as the decrease in use of nonwords to describe said items. Seeing promising results from this type of therapy has led to much optimism in hopes of developing more treatment methods for jargon aphasia[6].

Speech and language therapy is typically the primary treatment for individuals with aphasia. The goal of speech and language therapy is to increase the person’s communication abilities to a level functional for daily life. Goals are chosen based on collaboration between speech language pathologists, patients, and their family/caregivers. Goals should be individualized based on the person’s aphasia symptoms and communicative needs. In 2016, Wallace et al. found the following outcomes were commonly prioritized in therapy: communication, life participation, physical and emotional well-being, normalcy, and health and support services. However, available research is inconclusive about which specific approach to speech and language therapy is most effective in treating global aphasia.

Therapy can be either group or individual. Group therapies that integrate the use of visual aids allow for enhanced social and communication-skill development. Group therapy sessions typically revolve around simple, preplanned activities or games, and aim to facilitate social communication.

One particular therapy designed specifically for treatment of aphasia is Visual Action Therapy (VAT). VAT is a non-verbal gestural output program with 3 phases and 30 total steps. The program teaches unilateral gestures as symbolic representations of real life objects. Research on the effectiveness of VAT is limited and inconclusive.

One important therapy technique includes teaching family members and caregivers strategies for more effectively communicating with their loved ones. Research offers such strategies including, simplifying sentences and using common words, gaining the person's attention before speaking, using pointing and visual cues, allowing for adequate response time, and creating a quiet environment free of distractions.

Another approach to speech and language treatment is constraint-induced language therapy (CILT). CILT involves teaching the patient to use speech in small segments but avoid using gestures and familiar words . The speech language pathologist provides positive feedback throughout and ignores any mistakes made by the patient. The intensity with which this treatment is provided has been debated in the literature. One study, performed in 2015, compared the outcomes of patients with aphasia who received CILT for either 30 hours total over 2 weeks or 30 hours distributed over 10 weeks. Results showed that both groups made significant speech and language improvements. Overall, CILT is an effective treatment at a variety of intensities.

Research supporting the efficacy of pharmacological treatments for aphasia is limited. To date, no large scale clinical trials have proven benefits of pharmacological treatment.

These strategies elicit the use of an unaffected modality. For example, visual agnosics can use tactile information in replacement of visual information. Alternatively, an individual with prosopagnosia can use auditory information in order to replace visual information. For example, an individual with prosopagnosia can wait for someone to speak, and will usually recognize the individual from their speech.

Prognosis is strongly dependent on the location and extent of the lesion (damage) to the brain. Many personal factors also influence how a person will recover, which include age, previous medical history, level of education, gender, and motivation. All of these factors influence the brain's ability to adapt to change, restore previous skills, and learn new skills. It is important to remember that all the presentations of Receptive Aphasia may vary. The presentation of symptoms and prognosis are both dependent on personal components related to the individual's neural organization before the stroke, the extent of the damage, and the influence of environmental and behavioral factors after the damage occurs. The quicker a diagnosis of a stroke is made by a medical team, the more positive the patient's recovery may be. A medical team will work to control the signs and symptoms of the stroke and rehabilitation therapy will begin to begin to manage and recover lost skills. The rehabilitation team may consist of a certified Speech-Language Pathologist, Physical Therapist, Occupational Therapist, and the family/caregivers.. The length of therapy will be different for everyone, but research suggests that intense therapy over a short amount of time can improve outcomes of speech and language therapy for patients with aphasia. Research is not suggesting the only way therapy should be administered, but gives insight on how therapy affects the patient's prognosis.

Due to advances in modern neuroimaging, scientists have been able to gain a better understanding of how language is learned and comprehended. Based on the new data from the world of neuroscience, improvements can be made in coping with the disorder.

Therapists have been developing multiple methods of improving speech and comprehension. These techniques utilize three general principles: maximizing therapy occurrences, ensuring behavioral and communicative relevance, and allowing patients to focus on the language tools that are still available in his or her repertoire.

Many of the following treatment techniques are used to improve auditory comprehension in patients with aphasia:

- Use common words

- Using concrete nouns is more effective than using adjectives, adverbs, or verbs

- Using action verbs that are easily imagined

- Concise and grammatically simple sentences as opposed to lengthy sentences

- Speaking slowly, repeating oneself several times when conversing with patients who are aphasic

- Using gestures

A relatively new method of language therapy involves coincidence learning. Coincidence learning focuses on the simultaneous learning of two or more events and stipulates that these events are wired together in the brain, strengthening the learning process. Therapists use coincidence learning to find and improve language correlations or coincidences that have been either damaged or deleted by severe cases of aphasia, such as transcortical sensory aphasia. This technique is important in brain function and recovery, as it strengthens associated brain areas that remain unaffected after brian damage. It can be achieved with intensive therapy hours in order to maximize time where correlation is emphasized.

Through careful analysis of neuroimaging studies, a correlation has been developed with motor function and the understanding of action verbs. For example, leg and motor areas were seen to be activated words such as "kick", leading scientists to understand the connection between motor and language processes in the brain. This is yet another example of using relationships that are related in the brain for the purpose of rehabilitating speech and comprehension.

Of huge importance in aphasia therapy is the need to start practicing as soon as possible. Greater recovery occurs when a patient attempts to improve their comprehension and speaking soon after aphasia occurs. There is an inverse relationship between the length of time spent not practicing and level of recovery. The patient should be pushed to their limits of verbal communication in order for them to practice and build upon their remaining language skills.

One effective therapy technique is using what are known as language games in order to encourage verbal communication. One famous example is known as "Builder's Game", where a 'builder' and a 'helper' must communicate in order to effectively work on a project. The helper must hand the builder the tools he or she may need, which requires effective oral communication. The builder succeeds by requesting tools from the assistant by usually using single word utterances, such as 'hammer' or 'nail'. Thus, when the helper hands the tool to the builder, the game incorporates action with language, a key therapy technique. The assistant would then hand the builder the requested tool. Success of the game occurs when the builder's requests are specific to ensure successful building.

Ultimately, regardless of therapy plan or method, improvement in speech does not appear overnight; it requires a significant time investment by the patient as well as a dedicated speech therapist seeking to ensure that the patient is focusing on the correct speech tasks outside of the clinic. Furthermore, the patient must collaborate with friends and family members during their free time in order to maximize the efficacy of the treatment.

Many language impairments, including paraphasic errors, are reduced in number through spontaneous recovery of neurological function; this occurs most often with stroke patients within the first three months of recovery. Lesions associated with ischemic strokes have a shorter spontaneous recovery time, within the first two weeks, and lesions associated with hemorrhagic strokes, on the other hand have a longer period for spontaneous recovery, four to eight weeks. Whether spontaneous recovery occurs or not, treatment must begin immediately after the stroke. A traditional approach requires treatment beginning at the level of breakdown - in the case of paraphasia, at the level of the phoneme. There are commercially available workbooks that provide various activities such as letter, word-picture, or word-word matching, and sentence completion, among other things. The difficulty of these activities varies with the level of treatment. However, these treatments have not been proven to be clinically productive. Functional magnetic resonance imaging is the most widely used technique to study treatment-induced recovery, looking at activation of particular areas of the brain. There are many different ways to process fMRI scans, beginning with the pre-scanning process. Data must be normalized. There is also no consensus on whether or not single subject scans are more helpful than group scans to determine a general pattern of treatment. However, fMRI scans have a few disadvantages.

A 1988 study by Mary Boyle proposed a method focused on oral reading to treat phonemic paraphasias was partially successful, resulting in fewer phonemic paraphasias but a slower rate of speech. Treatments lasted for 50 minutes and occurred once a week. During these treatment sessions, the patient was instructed to look at twenty different phrases -each of these phrases consisted of one to three syllables - then read the phrase. If the patient failed to read the phrase, the process was repeated. If the patient failed to read the phrase again, the process was abandoned. To progress from a set of one syllable phrases to two syllable phrases and two syllable phrases to three syllable phrases, an 80% success rate was necessary. This treatment was partially successful. Although fewer phonemic paraphasias were produced due to this treatment, speaking efficiency was not improved by this study. This is partially because the focus of the treatment was on sound production rather than semantic content. Improvements lasted for six weeks before the patient regressed.

Treatment for aphasias is generally individualized, focusing on specific language and communication improvements, and regular exercise with communication tasks. Regular therapy for conduction aphasics has been shown to result in steady improvement on the Western Aphasia Battery. However, conduction aphasia is a mild aphasia, and conduction aphasics score highly on the WAB at baseline.

Transient paraphasias (as well as other language defects such as speech arrest) can be generated by artificially activating the brain's language network with Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). With navigated TMS (nTMS), nodes of the language network can be located presurgically so that critical areas can be saved when performing tumor or epilepsy surgery. Marketed by Nexstim, this method has received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance in the United States.

Treatment for all types of aphasia, including transcortical motor aphasia, is usually provided by a speech-language pathologist. The SLP chooses specific therapy tasks and goals based on the speech and language abilities and needs of the individual. In general for individuals with TMoA, treatment should capitalize on their strong auditory comprehension and repetition skills and address the individual's reduced speech output and difficulty initiating and maintaining a conversation. New research in aphasia treatment is showing the benefit of the Life Participation Approach to Aphasia (LPAA) in which goals are written based on the skills needed by the individual patient to participate in specific real-life situations (i.e. communicating effectively with nurses or gaining employment). Based on the specific needs of the patient, SLPs can provide a variety of treatment activities.

To improve word retrieval and initiation difficulties, clinicians may use confrontation naming in which the patient is asked to name various objects and pictures. Depending on the severity, they may also use sentence completion tasks in which the clinician says sentences with the final word(s) missing and expects the patient to fill in the blank. Limited research suggests that nonsymbolic limb movement on the left side (i.e. tapping the left hand on the table) during sentence production can increase verbal initiations. The use of the left arm in left space stimulates initiation mechanisms in the right hemisphere of the brain which can also be used for language allowing individuals to produce more grammatical sentences with higher fluency and more verbal initiation.

To increase speech output, the clinician may provide a set of pictures and prompt the patient to describe or elaborate on the events pictured. The clinician can also provide spoken or written words and prompt the patient to use the words in a sentence. Additionally, the clinician can ask questions based on the patient’s experiences, opinions, or general knowledge and prompt the patient to answer with phrases or sentences. To work on more connected speech, the clinician may ask the patient to describe procedures such as making a sandwich or doing laundry. A study found that syntax training in which sentence constructions are elicited on a hierarchy of difficulty produced gains in grammatically complete utterances and utterances that successfully communicated novel and accurate information.

To improve conversational skills, SLPs may engage the patient in structured conversations in which supports are provided to help the patient take appropriate conversational turns, maintain the topic of conversation, and formulate appropriate sentences. Clinicians often need to provide pragmatic guidelines so that the patient’s responses go beyond the clinician’s request and so the clinician does not do the majority of the talking. Research shows that conversation therapy can improve percent of complex utterances, the efficiency of the utterances for expressing ideas, and total time spent talking over more traditional stimulation therapy.

In order to improve the patient’s abilities to functionally communicate in their natural settings, the SLP will provide strategies and techniques to enhance their success in communicative settings (i.e. supplementing speech with nonverbal communication). Research supports the use of reduced syntax therapy to help patients overcome the non-fluent speech and agrammatism that often occurs with TMoA. Because agrammatism inhibits the patient's ability to form grammatically correct sentences, this type of treatment involves reducing these agrammatic deficits and teaching the patient to simplify linguistic structures while still conveying the message in order for language used to be more productive in conversation.

Additionally, they may train the patient’s communication partners to support the conversational abilities of the patient by facilitating the use of preserved cognitive and social functions. Research supports the use of various partner training programs such as Supported Conversation for Adults with Aphasia from the Aphasia Institute. In this program, the focus is put on acknowledging the patient’s competence and helping them to reveal that competence. Strategies include saying “I know you know” when appropriate, using gestures to supplement messages, limiting background noise, and given sufficient time for response.

From a neuroscience perspective, research has found that a dopamine agonist, bromocriptine, taken by mouth, has provided positive outcomes during intervention for non-fluent types of aphasia, such as TMoA or adynamic aphasia. Studies have found that bromocriptine increased neural networks which assist with the initiation of speech in individuals who possess non-fluent characteristics of speech.

In order to capitalize on neuroplasticity for treatment of all types of aphasia, timing, intensity, duration, and repetition of treatment should be taken into consideration. Research has found that aphasia treatment initiated during the earlier acute post-injury phase is more effective compared to treatment initiated in the chronic phase. With regard to intensity and duration of treatment, studies reported maximum recovery occurred with intense weekly therapy (approximately 8 hours per week) was delivered over a 2–3 month period. Other research shows that distributed therapy may be more beneficial than high intensity therapy. More research is needed to determine which is best, but it may be found that the ideal duration and intensity of therapy is variable depending on the patient and their needs.

In relation to other types of aphasia, TMoA occurs less frequently, so there is less information on its prognosis. In general, for individuals with aphasia, most recovery is seen within 6 months of the stroke or injury although more recovery may continue in the following months or years. The timeline of recovery may look different depending on the type of stroke that caused the aphasia. With an ischemic stroke, recovery is greatest within the first two weeks and then diminishes overtime until the progress stabilizes. With a hemorrhagic stroke, the patient often shows little improvement in the first few weeks and then has relatively rapid recovery until they stabilize.

In a study involving eight patients with border zone lesions, all patients presented with transcortical mixed aphasia initially after the stroke. Three of these patients made a complete recovery within a few days post-stroke. For three other patients with more anterior lesions, their aphasia transitioned to TMoA. All participants in the study regained full language abilities within 18 months following their stroke. This suggests a positive long-term prognosis for patients with TMoA. However, this might not be the case for all patients and more research is needed in order to solidify these findings. Another study found that prognosis of TMoA is affected by lesion size. Smaller lesions typically cause delays in speech initiation; whereas, larger lesions lead to more profound language abnormalities and difficulty with abstract language abilities.

Research has shown that treatment has a direct effect on aphasia outcomes. Intensity, duration and timing of treatment all need to be taken in to consideration when choosing a course of treatment and determining a prognosis. In general, greater intensity leads to greater improvement. For duration, longer-term treatment produces more permanent changes. As for timing, beginning treatment too early may be difficult for the system which has not recovered enough to do intensive therapy, but beginning too late may result missing the window of the opportunity in which the most change can occur. Neuroplasticity, the brain's natural ability to reorganize itself following a traumatic event, occurs best when treatment connects simultaneous events, maintains attention, taps into positive emotion, utilizes repetition tasks, and is specific to the individual's needs.

Other factors affecting prognosis includes location and site of lesion. Since the lesion that results in TMoA usually occurs in the watershed area and does not directly involve the areas of the brain responsible for general language abilities, prognosis for these patients is good overall. Other factors that determine a patient’s prognosis include age, education prior to the stroke, gender, motivation, and support.

There is no curative treatment for this condition. Supportive management is helpful.

Treating auditory verbal agnosia with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is controversial because of its inconsistency as a treatment method. Although IVIG is normally used to treat immune diseases, some individuals with auditory verbal agnosia have responded positively to the use of IVIG. Additionally, patients are more likely to relapse when treated with IVIG than other pharmacological treatments. IVIG is, thus, a controversial treatment as its efficacy in treating auditory verbal agnosia is dependent upon each individual and varies from case to case.

When evaluating the prognosis of a patient, the main contributing participant factors that influence the extent of neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to change are: age, lesion location, pre-existing cognitive status, motivation, age, overall health, and interaction amongst these. After brain damage, initial signs of global aphasia may appear within the first two days due to brain swelling (cerebral edema). With some time and natural recovery, impairment presentation may progress into expressive aphasia (most commonly) or receptive aphasia. Due to the size and location of the lesion associated with global aphasia, the prognosis for language abilities is poor. Research has shown that the prognosis of long-term language abilities is determined by the initial severity level of aphasia within the first four weeks after a stroke. As a result, there is a poor prognosis for persons who retain a diagnosis of aphasia after one month due to limited initial language abilities. Nonetheless, in the first year post-stroke, patients with global aphasia showed improvement in their Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) scores from baseline. When compared to individuals with Broca’s, Wernicke’s, anomic, and conduction types of aphasia, those with Broca’s aphasia showed the best rate and extent of improvement followed by global aphasia. The rate of improvement in language function was highest in the first four weeks after stroke.

Although the prognosis for persons diagnosed with global aphasia is poor, improvement in varying aspects of language is possible. For example, in 1992, Ferro performed research in which he studied the recovery of individuals with acute global aphasia, resulting from the five different lesion sites. The first lesion site was in the fronto-tempo-parietal region of the brain; patients with lesions in this location saw the least amount of gains out of all of the participants in the study, and they often never recovered from global aphasia. However, the second lesion site was the anterior, suprasylvian, frontal part of the brain; the third lesion site was the subcortical infarcts; and the fourth lesion site was the posterior, suprasylvian, parietal infarcts. Participants with lesions two, three, and four often recovered to a less severe form of aphasia, such as Broca's or transcortical. The fifth lesion site was a double lesion in both the frontal and temporal infarcts; patients with lesions at this site showed slight improvement. However, studies show that spontaneous improvement, if it happens, occurs within six months, but complete recovery is rare.

Studies have shown that persons with global aphasia have improved their verbal and nonverbal speech and language skills through speech and language therapy. One study examined the recovery of a group of individuals who were classified as having global aphasia at 3 months poststroke. The individuals received intensive speech and language intervention. The results of the study illustrated that all of the patients showed improvement. The greatest area of improvement was in auditory comprehension, and the least in the use of propositional speech. After 6 months poststroke, the individuals showed an increased use of gestures to communicate, as their communication skills remained severely impaired.

During therapy, most progress is seen within the first 3 years, but it is possible for language abilities to continuously improve at a steady rate due to long-term intensive language intervention. While improvement in language abilities is possible with intervention, only 20 percent of persons diagnosed with global aphasia achieve functional use of language. Communication of basic needs and the comprehension of simple conversations on highly familiar topics, are examples of common functional language use for this population.

Currently, the specific causes for PPA and other degenerative brain disease similar to PPA are unknown. Autopsies have revealed a variety of brain abnormalities in people who had PPA. These autopsies, as well as imaging techniques such as CT scans, MRI, EEG, single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and positron emission tomography (PET), have generally revealed abnormalities to be almost exclusively in the left hemisphere.

There is currently no known curative treatment for SD. The average duration of illness is 8–10 years, and its progression cannot be slowed. Progression of SD can lead to behavioral and social difficulties, thus supportive care is essential for improving quality of life in SD patients as they grow more incomprehensible.

Continuous practice in lexical learning has been shown to improve semantic memory in SD patients.

SD has no known preventative measures.

Anomic aphasia (also known as dysnomia, nominal aphasia, and amnesic aphasia) is a mild, fluent type of aphasia where an individual has word retrieval failures and cannot express the words they want to say (particularly nouns and verbs). Anomia is a deficit of expressive language. The most pervasive deficit in the aphasias is anomia. Some level of anomia is seen in all of the aphasias. Individuals with aphasia who display anomia can often describe an object in detail and maybe even use hand gestures to demonstrate how the object is used but cannot find the appropriate word to name the object.

People affected by jargon aphasia usually are elderly and/or people who have damage to the neural pathways of certain parts of the brain. This is usually the result of the following conditions[2]:

- Stroke

- Traumatic Brain Injury

- Epilepsy

- Migraine

- Brain Tumor

- Alzheimer's Disease

- Parkinson's Disease

Since jargon is associated with fluent (Wernicke’s) aphasia, it is usually caused by damage of the temporal lobe, and more specifically, Wernicke’s area. After the condition is diagnosed, a Computerized Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan is typically used to determine the location and severity of the brain damage that has caused the aphasia[2].

There have been cases in which aphasia has developed after damage to only the right hemisphere of the brain. These cases are few and far between, and usually involve unique circumstances for the individual. Most commonly, these results can stem from brain organization that is different than the general population, or a heavier than normal reliance on the right hemisphere of the brain[7].