Aphasia

Written in response to an article in the LATimes ~>[progressive aphasia]

No wonder we don’t know how to relieve aphasia, we still talk about it as though it were a speech problem. It’s actually a memory problem. What’s lost are the pathways that enable look-up and retrieval of words stored in memory. It only presents itself as a speech problem at early onset [link]. That’s why aphasia doesn’t lend itself to speech therapy. Treatments that focus on memory skills for word-retrieval are more helpful [link].

Symptoms: First, you have difficulty finding the right pronouns and names for things. They may escape the speaker entirely. Verb usage generally remains intact. “I can’t find the right world.” comes out instead of “I can’t find the right word.” “I’m going to the office.” in place of “I’m going to the store.” Homonyms or words that sound alike frequently get switched: “I’m going dental.” for “I’m going mental.” When I think of the all the steps that have to be performed in a fraction of a second and in the right sequence ..I’m surprised speech is possible at all. Even though speaking feels like a single, automatic process ..it’s by no means a  single skill. When you break it down, it looks something like this:

Idea ~>  Lexical    ~>     Context    ~>   Syntax     ~>     Speech
              Look-up &         Integation        Generation        Timing & Production
              Selection