Torio, Cielo Anmarei R.

09/28/2018
BSE-English Introduction to Linguistic

1. What is Aphasia?
- Aphasia is a communication disorder that results from damage or injury to
language parts of the brain. It's more common in older adults, particularly those
who have had a stroke.

Aphasia gets in the way of a person's ability to use or understand words.

Aphasia does not impair the person's intelligence. People who have aphasia
may have difficulty speaking and finding the "right" words to complete their
thoughts. They may also have problems understanding conversation, reading
and comprehending written words, writing words, and using numbers.

2. Wernicke’s area and Borca’s area.

- Wernicke's area also called Wernicke's speech area, is one of the two parts
of the cerebral cortex that are linked to speech (the other is Broca's area). It is
involved in the comprehension or understanding of written and spoken
language (in contrast to Broca's area that is involved in the production of
language). Broca's area is a region in the frontal lobe of the
dominant hemisphere, usually the left, of the hominid brain with functions
linked to speech production. Language processing has been linked to Broca's
area since Pierre Paul Broca reported impairments in two patients. [2] They
had lost the ability to speak after injury to the posterior inferior frontal gyrus of
the brain.

3. Summary about clinical cases on the relationship of language and brain

damage. (True to life story)
“Welcome to the Stroke a Chord choir, my name is Tim Adams.”

Adams, a 49-year-old lawyer from Australia, was training for a marathon about
four years ago when he suffered a massive stroke. He survived, but the stroke
damaged the part of his brain that controls speech. The condition is known as
aphasia.

But sometimes people who can't speak can sing, because the two acts
are controlled by different parts of the brain. And that's how the Stroke a Chord
choir in Melbourne can exist.
“The choir can sing because they have music processed in the right side of the
brain, or in a bit more diffuse areas of the brain, so singing is left relatively
untouched in a left hemisphere stroke," explains Bronwyn Jones, a speech
pathologist who has worked with the choir since 2010.

“Tim came to the choir and he had recently had a stroke and he was not
speaking a lot when he first came," Jones explains. "Being so young, to suddenly
lose your work, to lose your physical ability to lose your speech — they call it a
stroke for good reason. You’re just struck down and in a number of ways.”

The choir has been huge for him.

“My speech pathologist put me onto it,” Adams says. “I can’t thank her enough.
It’s exquisite.”

“For the first six months, I talked, yes or no," Adams remembers. But his speech
has improved since then, in part thanks to the choir. "Slowly, slowly the words
came back. I’m here now and yeah, it’s been a wild ride.”

Jones says it's not just Adams' language abilities that have come back,
either. “He has been amazing in how he has improved — both with his speech
and with being more and more outgoing,” he says.

The choir includes stroke victims of different levels of speech ability, some of
whom are worse off than Adams. “Gus, the choir member who sits next to
me, has no speech at all," he says. "But he can sing along, so it’s a wonderful
language.”

The choir's performances have given Adams special memories as well. "One of
the things that had the most impact on me — this child had never heard her
grandfather's voice, and he could see it in her eyes and when she said,
'Grandpa, that’s the first time I’ve heard your voice.' He was absolutely blown
away.”

Tim Adams and Bronwyn Jones told their story to producer Joel Carnegie.