Broca's (expressive) aphasia is a type of non-fluent aphasia in which an individual’s speech is halting and effortful. Misarticulations or distortions of consonants and vowels, namely phonetic dissolution, are common. Individuals with expressive aphasia may only produce single words, or words in groups of two or three. Long pauses between words are common and multi-syllabic words may be produced one syllable at a time with pauses between each syllable. The prosody of a person with Broca's aphasia is compromised by shortened length of utterances and the presence of self-repairs and disfluencies. Intonation and stress patterns are also deficient.

For example, in the following passage, a patient with Broca's aphasia is trying to explain how he came to the hospital for dental surgery and it may look like this:Yes... ah... Monday... er... Dad and Peter H... (his own name), and Dad... er... hospital... and ah... Wednesday... Wednesday, nine o'clock... and oh... Thursday... ten o'clock, ah doctors... two... an' doctors... and er... teeth... yah.The speech of a person with expressive aphasia contains mostly content words such as nouns, verbs, and some adjectives. However, function words like conjunctions, articles, and prepositions are rarely used except for “and” which is prevalent in the speech of most patients with aphasia. The omission of function words makes the person's speech agrammatic. A communication partner of a person with aphasia may say that the person's speech sounds telegraphic due to poor sentence construction and disjointed words. For example, a person with expressive aphasia might say "Smart... university... smart... good... good..."

Self-monitoring is typically well preserved in patients with Broca's aphasia. They are usually aware of their communication deficits, and are more prone to depression and outbursts from frustration than are patients with other forms of aphasia.

In general, word comprehension is preserved, allowing patients to have functional receptive language skills. Individuals with Broca's aphasia understand most of the everyday conversation around them, but higher-level deficits in receptive language can occur. Because comprehension is substantially impaired for more complex sentences, it is better to use simple language when speaking with an individual with expressive aphasia. This is exemplified by the difficulty to understand phrases or sentences with unusual structure. A typical patient with Broca's aphasia will misinterpret "the man is bitten by the dog" by switching the subject and object to “the dog is bitten by the man.”

Typically, people with expressive aphasia can understand speech and read better than they can produce speech and write. The person's writing will resemble his or her speech and will be effortful, lacking cohesion, and containing mostly content words. Letters will likely be formed clumsily and distorted and some may even be omitted. Although listening and reading are generally intact, subtle deficits in both reading and listening comprehension are almost always present during assessment of aphasia.

Because Broca's area is anterior to the primary motor cortex which is responsible for movement of the face, hands, and arms, a lesion affecting Broca's areas may also result in hemiparesis (weakness of both limbs on the same side of the body) or hemiplegia (paralysis of both limbs on the same side of the body). The brain is wired contralaterally, which means the limbs on right side of the body are controlled by the left hemisphere and vice versa. Therefore, when Broca's area or surrounding areas in the left hemisphere are damaged, hemiplegia or hemiparesis often occurs on the right side of the body in individuals with Broca's aphasia.

Severity of expressive aphasia varies among patients. Some people may only have mild deficits and detecting problems with their language may be difficult. In the most extreme cases, patients may be able to produce only a single word. Even in such cases, over-learned and rote-learned speech patterns may be retained- for instance, some patients can count from one to ten, but cannot produce the same numbers in novel conversation.

The following are common symptoms seen in patients with Wernicke's aphasia:

Impaired Comprehension: deficits in understanding (receptive) written and spoken language. This is because Wernicke's area is responsible for assigning meaning to the language that is heard, so if it is damaged, the brain cannot comprehend the information that is being received.

Poor Word Retrieval: ability to retrieve target words is impaired. This is also referred to as Anomia.

Fluent Speech: individuals with Wernicke's aphasia do not have difficulty with producing connected speech that flows.. Although the connection of the words may be appropriate, the words they are using may not belong together or make sense (see Production of Jargon below).

Production of Jargon: speech that lacks content, consists of typical intonation, and is structurally intact. Jargon can consist of a string of neologisms, as well as a combination of real words that do not make sense together in context.

Awareness: Individuals with Wernicke's aphasia are often not aware of their incorrect productions, which would further explain why they do not correct themselves when they produce jargon, paraphasias, or neologisms.

Paraphasias:

- Phonemic (Literal) Paraphasias: involves the substitution, addition, or rearrangement of sounds so that an error can be defined as sounding like the target word. Often, half of the word is still intact which allows for easy comparison to the appropriate, original word.

- Ex: "bap" for "map"

- Semantic (Verbal) Paraphasias: saying a word that is related to the target word in meaning or category; frequently observed in Wernicke's aphasia.

- Ex: "jet" for "airplane" or "knife" for "fork"

Neologisms: nonwords that have no relation to the target word.

- Ex: "dorflur" for "shoe"

Circumlocution: talking around the target word.

- Ex: "uhhh it's white...it's flat...you write on it…" (when referencing paper)

Press of speech: run-on speech.

- If a clinician asks, "what do you do at a supermarket?" And the individual responds with "Well, the supermarket is a place. It is a place with a lot of food. My favorite food is italian food. At a supermarket, I buy different kinds of food. There are carts and baskets. Supermarkets have lots of customers, and workers…."

Lack of Hemiparesis: typically, no motor deficits are seen with a localized lesion in Wernicke's area.

Reduced Retention Span: reduced ability to retain information for extended periods of time.

Impairments in reading and writing: impairments can be seen in both reading and writing with differing severity levels.

How to Differentiate from Other Types of Aphasia.

- Expressive Aphasia (non-fluent Broca's Aphasia): individuals have great difficulty forming complete sentences with generally only basic content words (leaving out words like "is" and "the").

- Global Aphasia: individuals have extreme difficulties with both expressive (producing language) and receptive (understanding language).

- Anomic Aphasia: the biggest hallmark is an individuals poor word finding abilities; their speech is fluent and appropriate, but full of circumlocutions (evident in both writing and speech).

- Conduction Aphasia: individual can comprehend what is being said and is fluent in spontaneous speech, but they cannot repeat what is being said to them.

Conduction aphasics will show relatively well-preserved auditory comprehension, which may even be completely functional. Spontaneous speech production will be fluent and generally grammatically and syntactically correct. Intonation and articulation will also be preserved. Speech will often contain paraphasic errors: phonemes and syllables will be dropped or transposed (e.g., "snowball" → "snowall", "television" → "vellitision", "ninety-five percent" → "ninety-twenty percent"). The hallmark deficit of this disorder, however, is in repetition. Patients will show a marked inability to repeat words or sentences when prompted by an examiner. After saying a sentence to a person with conduction aphasia, he or she will be able to paraphrase the sentence accurately but will not be able to repeat it, possibly because their "motor speech error processing is disrupted by inaccurate forward predictions, or because detected errors are not translated into corrective commands due to damage to the auditory-motor interface". When prompted to repeat words, patients will be unable to do so, and produce many paraphasic errors. For example, when prompted with "bagger", a patient may respond with, "gabber". Oral reading can also be poor.

However, patients recognize their paraphasias and errors and will try to correct them, with multiple attempts often necessary for success. This recognition is due to preserved auditory error detection mechanisms. Error sequences frequently fit a pattern of incorrect approximations featuring known morphemes that "a") share one or more similarly located phonemes but "b") differ in at least one aspect that makes the substituted morpheme(s) semantically distinct. This repetitive effort to approximate the appropriate word or phrase is known as "conduite d’approche". For example, when prompted to repeat "Rosenkranz", a German-speaking patient may respond with, "rosenbrau... rosenbrauch... rosengrau... bro... grosenbrau... grossenlau, rosenkranz... kranz... rosenkranz".

Conduction aphasia is a relatively mild language impairment, and most patients return to day-to-day life. Symptoms of conduction aphasia, as with other aphasias, can be transient, lasting only several hours or a few days. As aphasias and other language disorders are frequently due to stroke, their symptoms can change and evolve over time, or simply disappear. This is due to healing in the brain after inflammation or hemorrhage, which leads to decreased local impairment. Furthermore, plastic changes in the brain may lead to the recruitment of new pathways to restore lost function. For example, the right hemisphere speech systems may learn to correct for left-hemisphere damage. However, chronic conduction aphasia is possible, without transformation to other aphasias. These patients show prolonged, profound deficits in repetition, frequent phonemic paraphasias, and "conduite d'approche" during spontaneous speech.

Given the previously stated signs and symptoms the following behaviors are often seen in people with aphasia as a result of attempted compensation for incurred speech and language deficits:

- Self-repairs: Further disruptions in fluent speech as a result of mis-attempts to repair erred speech production.

- Speech disfluencies: Include previously mentioned disfluencies including repetitions and prolongations at the phonemic, syllable and word level presenting in pathological/ severe levels of frequency.

- Struggle in non-fluent aphasias: A severe increase in expelled effort to speak after a life where talking and communicating was an ability that came so easily can cause visible frustration.

- Preserved and automatic language: A behavior in which some language or language sequences that were used so frequently, prior to onset, they still possess the ability to produce them with more ease than other language post onset.

It is most common for the onset of global aphasia to occur after a thrombotic stroke (at the trunk of the middle cerebral artery), with varying severity. The general signs and symptoms include the inability to understand, create, and repeat speech and language. These difficulties also persist in reading, writing, and auditory comprehension abilities.

Verbal language typically consists of a few recognizable utterances and words (e.g., hello), overlearned phrases (e.g., how are you), and expletives (e.g., a curse word). However, those affected by global aphasia may express themselves using facial expressions, intonation, and gestures. Extensive lexical (vocabulary) impairment is possible, resulting in an inability to read simple words or sentences. Global aphasia may be accompanied by weakness of the right side of the face and right hemiplegia (paralysis), but can occur with or without hemiparesis (weakness). Additionally, it is common for an individual with global aphasia to have one or more of the following additional impairments: apraxia of speech, alexia, pure word deafness, agraphia, facial apraxia, and depression.

Persons with global aphasia are socially appropriate, usually attentive, and task-oriented. Some are able to respond to yes/no questions, but responses are more reliable when questions refer to family and personal experiences. Automatic speech is preserved with normal phonemic, phonetic and inflectional structures. Right hemiparesis or hemiplegia, right-sided sensory loss, and right homonymous hemianopsia may manifest as well. Persons with global aphasia may recognize location names and common objects’ names (single-words), while rejecting pseudo-words and real but incorrect names.

People with aphasia may experience any of the following behaviors due to an acquired brain injury, although some of these symptoms may be due to related or concomitant problems such as dysarthria or apraxia and not primarily due to aphasia. Aphasia symptoms can vary based on the location of damage in the brain. Signs and symptoms may or may not be present in individuals with aphasia and may vary in severity and level of disruption to communication. Often those with aphasia will try to hide their inability to name objects by using words like "thing". So when asked to name a pencil they may say it is a thing used to write.

- Inability to comprehend language

- Inability to pronounce, not due to muscle paralysis or weakness

- Inability to speak spontaneously

- Inability to form words

- Inability to name objects (anomia)

- Poor enunciation

- Excessive creation and use of personal neologisms

- Inability to repeat a phrase

- Persistent repetition of one syllable, word, or phrase (stereotypies)

- Paraphasia (substituting letters, syllables or words)

- Agrammatism (inability to speak in a grammatically correct fashion)

- Dysprosody (alterations in inflexion, stress, and rhythm)

- Incomplete sentences

- Inability to read

- Inability to write

- Limited verbal output

- Difficulty in naming

- Speech disorder

- Speaking gibberish

- Inability to follow or understand simple requests

There are three main types of anomia:

- Word selection anomia occurs when the patient knows how to use an object and can correctly select the target object from a group of objects, and yet cannot name the object. Some patients with word selection anomia may exhibit selective impairment in naming particular types of objects, such as animals or colors. In the subtype known as color anomia, the patient can distinguish between colors but cannot identify them by name or name the color of an object. The patients can separate colors into categories, but they cannot name them.

- Semantic anomia is a disorder in which the meaning of words becomes lost. In patients with semantic anomia, a naming deficit is accompanied by a recognition deficit. Thus, unlike patients with word selection anomia, patients with semantic anomia are unable to select the correct object from a group of objects, even when provided with the name of the target object.

- Disconnection anomia results from the severing of connections between sensory and language cortices. Patients with disconnection anomia may exhibit modality-specific anomia, where the anomia is limited to a specific sensory modality, such as hearing. For example, a patient who is perfectly capable of naming a target object when it is presented via certain sensory modalities like audition or touch, may be unable to name the same object when the object is presented visually. Thus, in such a case, the patient's anomia arises as a consequence of a disconnect between his/her visual cortex and language cortices.

In addition to difficulty expressing oneself, individuals with expressive aphasia are also noted to commonly have trouble with comprehension in certain linguistic areas. This agrammatism overlaps with receptive aphasia, but can be seen in patients who have expressive aphasia without being diagnosed as having receptive aphasia. The most well-noted of these are object-relative clauses, object Wh- questions, and topicalized structures (placing the topic at the beginning of the sentence). These three concepts all share phrasal movement, which can cause words to lose their thematic roles when they change order in the sentence. This is often not an issue for people without agrammatic aphasias, but many people with aphasia rely heavily on word order to understand roles that words play within the sentence.

Peripheral agraphias occurs when there is damage to the various motor and visualization skills involved in writing.

- Apraxic agraphia is the impairment in written language production associated with disruption of the motor system. It results in distorted, slow, effortful, incomplete, and/or imprecise letter formation. Though written letters are often so poorly formed that they are almost illegible, the ability to spell aloud is often retained. This form of agraphia is caused specifically by a loss of specialized motor plans for the formation of letters and not by any dysfunction affecting the writing hand. Apraxic agraphia may present with or without ideomotor apraxia. Paralysis, chorea, Parkinson's disease (micrographia), and dystonia (writer's cramp) are motor disorders commonly associated with agraphia.

- Hysterical agraphia is the impairment in written language production caused by a conversion disorder.

- Reiterative agraphia is found in individuals who repeat letters, words, or phrases in written language production an abnormal number of times. Preservation, paragraphia, and echographia are examples of reiterative agraphia.

- Visuospatial agraphia is the impairment in written language production defined by a tendency to neglect one portion (often an entire side) of the writing page, slanting lines upward or downward, and abnormal spacing between letters, syllables, and words. The orientation and correct sequencing of the writing will also be impaired. Visuospatial agraphia is frequently associated with left hemispatial neglect, difficulty in building or assembling objects, and other spatial difficulties.

Central agraphia occurs when there are both impairments in spoken language and impairments to the various motor and visualization skills involved in writing. Individuals who have agraphia with fluent aphasia write a normal quantity of well-formed letters, but lack the ability to write meaningful words. Receptive aphasia is an example of fluent aphasia. Those who have agraphia with nonfluent aphasia can write brief sentences but their writing is difficult to read. Their writing requires great physical effort but lacks proper syntax and often has poor spelling. Expressive aphasia is an example of nonfluent aphasia. Individuals who have Alexia with agraphia have difficulty with both the production and comprehension of written language. This form of agraphia does not impair spoken language.

- Deep agraphia affects an individuals' phonological ability and orthographic memory. Deep agraphia is often the result of a lesion involving the left parietal region (supramarginal gyrus or insula). Individuals can neither remember how words look when spelled correctly, nor sound them out to determine spelling. Individuals typically rely on their damaged orthographic memory to spell; this results in frequent errors, usually semantic in nature. Individuals have more difficulty with abstract concepts and uncommon words. Reading and spoken language are often impaired as well.

- Gerstmann syndrome agraphia is the impairment of written language production associated with the following structural symptoms: difficulty discriminating between one's own fingers, difficulty distinguishing left from right, and difficulty performing calculations. All four of these symptoms result from pathway lesions. Gerstmann's syndrome may additionally be present with alexia and mild aphasia.

- Global agraphia also impairs an individuals' orthographic memory although to a greater extent than deep agraphia. In global apraxia, spelling knowledge is lost to such a degree that the individual can only write very few meaningful words, or cannot write any words at all. Reading and spoken language are also markedly impaired.

- Lexical and structural agraphia are caused by damage to the orthographic memory; these individuals cannot visualize the spelling of a word, though they do retain the ability to sound them out. This impaired spelling memory can imply the loss or degradation of the knowledge or just an inability to efficiently access it. There is a regularity effect associated with lexical agraphia in that individuals are less likely to correctly spell words without regular, predictable spellings. Additionally, spelling ability tends to be less impaired for common words. Individuals also have difficulty with homophones. Language competence in terms of grammar and sentence writing tends to be preserved.

- Phonological agraphia is the opposite of lexical agraphia in that the ability to sound out words is impaired, but the orthographical memory of words may be intact. It is associated with a lexicality effect by a difference in the ability to spell words versus nonwords; individuals with this form of agraphia are depending on their orthographic memory. Additionally, it is often harder for these individuals to access more abstract words without strong semantic representations (i.e., it is more difficult for them to spell prepositions than concrete nouns).

- Pure agraphia is the impairment in written language production without any other language or cognitive disorder.

Agraphia can occur separately or co-occur and can be caused by damage to the angular gyrus

Wernicke's aphasia, also known as receptive aphasia, sensory aphasia, or posterior aphasia, is a type of aphasia in which individuals have difficulty understanding written and spoken language. Patients with Wernicke's aphasia demonstrate fluent speech, which is characterized by typical speech rate, intact syntactic abilities, and effortless speech output. Writing often reflects speech in that it tends to lack content or meaning. In most cases, motor deficits (i.e. hemiparesis) do not occur in individuals with Wernicke's aphasia. Therefore, they may produce a large amount of speech without much meaning. Wernicke's aphasia was named after Carl Wernicke who is credited with discovering the area of the brain responsible for language comprehension. Individuals with Wernicke's aphasia are typically unaware of their errors in speech and do not realize their speech may lack meaning. They typically remain unaware of even their most profound language deficits.

Like many acquired language disorders, Wernicke's aphasia can be experienced in many different ways and to many different degrees. Patients diagnosed with Wernicke's aphasia can show severe language comprehension deficits; however, this is dependent on the severity and extent of the lesion. Severity levels may range from being unable to understand even the simplest spoken and/or written information to missing minor details of a conversation. Many diagnosed with Wernicke's aphasia have difficulty with repetition in words and sentences, and or working memory.

Transcortical sensory aphasia (TSA) is a kind of aphasia that involves damage to specific areas of the temporal lobe of the brain, resulting in symptoms such as poor auditory comprehension, relatively intact repetition, and fluent speech with semantic paraphasias present. TSA is a fluent aphasia similar to Wernicke's aphasia, with the exception of a strong ability to repeat words and phrases. The person may repeat questions rather than answer them ("echolalia").

In all of these ways, TSA is very similar to a more commonly known language disorder, receptive aphasia. However, transcortical sensory aphasia differs from receptive aphasia in that patients still have intact repetition and exhibit echolalia, or the compulsive repetition of words. Transcortical sensory aphasia cannot be diagnosed through brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), as the results are often difficult to interpret. Therefore, clinicians rely on language assessments and observations to determine if a patient presents with the characteristics of TSA. Patients diagnosed with TSA have shown partial recovery of speech and comprehension after beginning speech therapy. Speech therapy methods for patients with any subtype of aphasia are based on the principles of learning and neuroplasticity. Clinical research on TSA is limited because it occurs so infrequently in patients with aphasia that it is very difficult to perform systematic studies.

TSA should not be confused with transcortical motor aphasia (TMA), which is characterized by nonfluent speech output, with good comprehension and repetition. Patients with TMA have impaired writing skills, difficulty speaking and difficulty maintaining a clear thought process. Furthermore, TMA is caused by lesions in cortical motor areas of the brain as well as lesions in the anterior portion of the basal ganglia, and can be seen in patients with expressive aphasia.

Anomic aphasia (anomia) is a type of aphasia characterized by problems recalling words, names, and numbers. Speech is fluent and receptive language is not impaired in someone with anomic aphasia. Subjects often use circumlocutions (speaking in a roundabout way) in order to avoid a name they cannot recall or to express a certain word they cannot remember. Sometimes the subject can recall the name when given clues. Additionally, patients are able to speak with correct grammar; the main problem is finding the appropriate word to identify an object or person.

Sometimes subjects may know what to do with an object, but still not be able to give a name to the object. For example, if a subject is shown an orange and asked what it is called, the subject may be well aware that the object can be peeled and eaten, and may even be able to demonstrate this by actions or even verbal responses – however, they cannot recall that the object is called an "orange". Sometimes, when a person with this condition is multilingual, they might confuse the language they are speaking in trying to find the right word (inadvertent code-switching).

If a suspected brain injury has occurred, the patient undergoes a series of medical imaging, which could include MRI(magnetic resonance imaging) or CT (computed tomography) scan. After the diagnosis of a brain injury, a speech and language pathologist will perform a variety of tests to determine the classification of aphasia. Additionally, the Boston Assessment of Severe Aphasia (BASA) is a commonly used assessment for diagnosing aphasia. BASA is used to determine treatment plans after strokes lead to symptoms of aphasia and tests both gestural and verbal responses. Cognitive functions can be assessed using the Cognitive Test Battery for Global Aphasia (CoBaGa). The CoBaGa is an appropriate measure to assess a person with severe aphasia because it does not require verbal responses, rather manipulative answers. The CoBaGa assesses cognitive functions such as attention, executive functions, logical reasoning, memory, visual-auditory recognition, and visual-spatial ability. Van Mourik et al. conducted a study in which they assessed the cognitive abilities of people with global aphasia using the Global Aphasic Neuropsychological Battery. This test assesses attention/concentration, memory, intelligence, and visual and auditory nonverbal recognition. The results of this study helped the researchers determine there were varying levels of severity among individuals with global aphasia.

Conduction aphasia, also called associative aphasia, is a relatively rare form of aphasia. An acquired language disorder, it is characterized by intact auditory comprehension, fluent (yet paraphasic) speech production, but poor speech repetition. They are fully capable of understanding what they are hearing, but fail to encode phonological information for production. This deficit is load-sensitive as patients show significant difficulty repeating phrases, particularly as the phrases increase in length and complexity and as they stumble over words they are attempting to pronounce. Patients will display frequent errors during spontaneous speech, such as substituting or transposing sounds. They will also be aware of their errors, and will show significant difficulty correcting them. For example: "Clinician: Now, I want you to say some words after me. Say ‘boy’. Patient: Boy. Clinician: Home. Patient: Home. Clinician: Seventy-nine. Patient: Ninety-seven. No … sevinty-sine … siventy-nice…. Clinician: Let’s try another one. Say ‘refrigerator’. Patient: Frigilator … no? how about … frerigilator … no frigaliterlater … aahh! It’s all mixed up!"

Shallice and Warrington (1970) were able to differentiate two variants of

this constellation: the reproduction and the repetition type. These authors suggested an exclusive deficit of auditory-verbal short-term memory in repetition conduction aphasia whereas the other variant was assumed to reflect disrupted phonological encoding mechanism, afflicting confrontation tasks such as repetition, reading and naming in a similar manner.

Left-hemisphere damage involving auditory regions often result in speech deficits. Lesions in this area that damage the sensorimotor dorsal stream suggest that the sensory system aid in motor speech. Studies have suggested that conduction aphasia is a result of damage specifically to the left superior temporal gyrus and/or the left supra marginal gyrus. The classical explanation for conduction aphasia is that of a disconnection between the brain areas responsible for speech comprehension (Wernicke's area) and speech production (Broca's area), due specifically to damage to the arcuate fasciculus, a deep white matter tract. Patients are still able to comprehend speech because the lesion does not disrupt the ventral stream pathway.

Transcortical sensory aphasia is caused by lesions in the inferior left temporal lobe of the brain located near Wernicke's area, and is usually due to minor hemorrhage or contusion in the temporal lobe, or infarcts of the left posterior cerebral artery (PCA). One function of the arcuate fasciculus is the connection between Wernicke’s and Broca’s area. In TSA Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas are spared, meaning that lesions do not occur in these regions of the brain. However, since the arcuate fasciculus, Wernicke's area, and Broca's area are secluded from the rest of the brain in TSA, patients still have intact repetition (as information from the arcuate fasciculus is relayed to Broca’s area), but cannot attach meaning to words, either spoken or heard.

Auditory verbal agnosia can be referred to as a pure aphasia because it has a high degree of specificity. Despite an inability to comprehend speech, patients with auditory verbal agnosia typically retain the ability to hear and process non-speech auditory information, speak, read and write. This specificity suggests that there is a separation between speech perception, non-speech auditory processing, and central language processing. In support of this theory, there are cases in which speech and non-speech processing impairments have responded differentially to treatment. For example, some therapies have improved writing comprehension in patients over time, while speech remained critically impaired in those same patients.

The term "pure word deafness" is something of a misnomer. By definition, individuals with pure word deafness are not deaf – in the absence of other impairments, these individuals have normal hearing for all sounds, including speech. The term "deafness" originates from the fact that individuals with AVA are unable to "comprehend" speech that they hear. The term "pure word" refers to the fact that comprehension of verbal information is selectively impaired in AVA. For this reason, AVA is distinct from other auditory agnosias in which the recognition of nonspeech sounds is impaired. Classical (or pure) auditory agnosia is an inability to process environmental sounds. Interpretive or receptive agnosia (amusia) is an inability to understand music.

Patients with pure word deafness complain that speech sounds simply do not register, or that they tend not to come up. Other claims include speech sounding as if it were in a foreign language, the words having a tendency to run together, or the feeling that speech was simply not connected to the patient's voice.

Two areas of the brain, Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are responsible for various disruptions in speech when damaged. Each is defined by their distinct characteristics. Broca’s aphasia is characterized by non-fluent or telegraphic-type speech - where articles, conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, pronouns and morphological inflections (plurals, past tense) are omitted. The word substitutions are infrequent and distortion of consonants and simplification of consonant clusters is frequent. Content words such as nouns, verbs and adjectives may be preserved. Subjects of this aphasia are aware of their errors in speech. Damage to the Broca’s area does not affect comprehension of speech.

Wernicke’s aphasia is characterized by fluent language with made up or unnecessary words with little or no meaning to speech. Those who suffer from this type of aphasia have difficulty understanding others speech and are unaware of their own mistakes. When corrected they will repeat their verbal paraphasias and have trouble finding the correct word. Wernicke’s aphasia is found in the dominant hemisphere of the posterior gyrus of the first temporal convolution of the brain, whereas Broca’s aphasia is found anterior to the Wernicke’s area.

Paraphasia is associated with fluent aphasias, characterized by “fluent spontaneous speech, long grammatically shaped sentences and preserved prosody abilities.” Examples of these fluent aphasias include receptive or Wernicke’s aphasia, anomic aphasia, conduction aphasia, and transcortical sensory aphasia, among others. All of these lead to a difference in processing efficiency, which is often caused by damage to a cortical region in the brain (in receptive aphasia, for example, the lesion is in or near Wernicke’s area); lesion location is the most important determining factor for all aphasic disorders, including paraphasia - the location of the lesion can be used to hypothesize the type of aphasic symptoms the patient will display. This lesion can be caused by a variety of different methods: malfunctioning blood vessels (caused, for example, by a stroke) in the brain are the cause of 80% of aphasias in adults, as compared to head injuries, dementia and degenerative diseases, poisoning, metabolic disorders, infectious diseases, and demyelinating diseases. Lesions involving the posterior superior temporal lobe are often associated with fluent aphasias.

Visual agnosia is a broad category that refers to a deficiency in the ability to recognize visual objects. Visual agnosia can be further subdivided into two different subtypes: apperceptive visual agnosia and associative visual agnosia.

Individuals with apperceptive visual agnosia display the ability to see contours and outlines when shown an object, but they experience difficulty if asked to categorize objects. Apperceptive visual agnosia is associated with damage to one hemisphere, specifically damage to the posterior sections of the right hemisphere.

In contrast, individuals with associative visual agnosia experience difficulty when asked to name objects. Associative agnosia is associated with damage to both the right and left hemispheres at the occipitotemporal border. A specific form of associative visual agnosia is known as prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize faces. For example, these individuals have difficulty recognizing friends, family and coworkers. However, individuals with prosopagnosia can recognize all other types of visual stimuli.

Transcortical motor aphasia (TMoA), also known as commissural dysphasia or white matter dysphasia, results from damage in the anterior superior frontal lobe of the language-dominant hemisphere. This damage is typically due to cerebrovascular accident (CVA). TMoA is generally characterized by reduced speech output, which is a result of dysfunction of the affected region of the brain. The left hemisphere is usually responsible for performing language functions, although left-handed individuals have been shown to perform language functions using either their left or right hemisphere depending on the individual. The anterior frontal lobes of the language-dominant hemisphere are essential for initiating and maintaining speech. Because of this, individuals with TMoA often present with difficulty in speech maintenance and initiation.

Damage in the watershed region does not directly harm the areas of the brain involved in language production or comprehension; instead, the damage isolates these areas from the rest of the brain. If there is damage to the frontal lobe, executive functions related to language use are often affected. Executive functions relevant to language include activating language responses, controlling syntax (grammar), and narrative discourse. Difficulties in these areas can lead to supplementary deficits involving difficulties forming complex sentences, choosing which words to use appropriately, and initiating speech in conversation.

The extent and location of the brain damage will impact the degree and variety of language functioning characteristics (i.e. damage deep to the frontal lobe and/or damage across multiple regions will greatly impair language). Right hemiparesis, or right-sided paralysis, may coincide with TMoA if the lesion in the anterior frontal lobe is large enough and extends into the posterior frontal lobe.

There are some other forms of aphasia that relate to TMoA. For instance, adynamic aphasia is a form of TMoA that is characterized by sparse speech. This occurs as a result of executive functioning in the frontal lobe. Another form of aphasia related to TMoA is dynamic aphasia. Patients with this form of aphasia may present with a contiguity disorder in which they have difficulty combining linguistic elements. For dynamic aphasia, this is most apparent when the patient is asked to sequence at the sentence level whereas for other aphasias contiguity disorder can be seen at the phoneme or word level.

There is no uniform performance among patients with auditory verbal agnosia; therefore it is not possible to attribute specific phonetic or phonological deficits to the syndrome. In order to diagnose AVA, two intact abilities need to be established:

- Words that are heard must have undergone adequate acoustic analysis as evidenced by correct repetition;

- The semantic representation of the word must be intact as evidenced by immediate comprehension of the word when presented in written form.

If both of these criteria are met "and" lack of auditory verbal comprehension is apparent, a diagnosis of AVA may follow.

In at least one instance, the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination has been used to profile AVA. This method was able to show that the patient experienced marked difficulty in speech perception with minor to no minor deficits in production, reading, and writing, fitting the profile of AVA. While this provides a well-known example, other verbal-audio test batteries can and have also been used to diagnose pure speech deafness.

Speech agnosia, or auditory verbal agnosia, refers to "an inability to comprehend spoken words despite intact hearing, speech production and reading ability". Patients report that they do indeed hear sounds being produced, but that the sounds are fundamentally unrecognizable/untranslatable.

1. EXAMINER: What did you eat for breakfast?

2. PATIENT: Breakfast, breakfast, it sounds familiar but it doesn't speak to me. (Obler & Gjerlow 1999:45)

Despite an inability to process what the speaker is saying, some patients have been reported to recognize certain characteristic information about the speaker's voice (such as being a man or woman).

TMoA is classified as a non-fluent aphasia that is characterized by a significantly reduced output of speech, but good auditory comprehension. Auditory comprehension skills remain intact because the arcuate fasciculus and Wernicke's area are not impaired. Individuals with TMoA also exhibit good repetition skills and can repeat long, complex phrases effortlessly and without error. However, spontaneous speech often presents with paraphasias (a term used to describe a wide variety of speech errors that are caused by aphasia). Regardless of any relative communication strengths, individuals with TMoA are typically poor conversational partners. Due to damage in the anterior superior frontal lobe, people with TMoA have deficits in initiation and maintenance of conversations, which results in reduced speech output. A person with TMoA may seldomly produce utterances and typically remain silent. The utterances that they do produce are typically only one to two words long. However, in more structured and predictable interactions, individuals with TMoA tend to respond more fluently and promptly. In addition, these individuals are characterized by their attentiveness and cooperation and are often described as being task-oriented.

Jargon aphasia is a type of fluent aphasia in which an individual's speech is incomprehensible, but appears to make sense to the individual. Persons experiencing this condition will either replace a desired word with another that sounds or looks like the original one, or has some other connection to it, or they will replace it with random sounds. Accordingly, persons with jargon aphasia often use neologisms, and may perseverate if they try to replace the words they can't find with sounds.