The Fragile Brain

Speech and Language

 Most common causes of
damage to the brain
 Stroke (also called cerebrovascular accident or CVA): brain is deprived of
 oxygen because of a blocked major artery, a blood vessel ruptures and
blood
 is spilled on or in brain tissue, preventing necessary oxygen from reaching
 that portion of the brain, etc
  Some diseases like multiple sclerosis (damage to white matter/central
 nervous system), dementia, etc.
  Trauma, tumors, and hydrocephalus (build up of cerebral spinal fluid in
 brain).
  Traumatic brain injury
  Some possible causes for developmental
 abnormalities in the brain
  Genetics (e.g. Down Syndrome, Williams Syndrome)
  Fetal damage (e.g. from excessive alcohol intake by mother, drugs, etc.)
  Disease (early epileptic seizures can interfere with normal brain
 development)
 Some possible causes for
developmental
abnormalities in the brain

 Genetics (e.g. Down Syndrome,

Williams Syndrome)
 Fetal damage (e.g. from excessive
alcohol intake by mother, drugs, etc.)
 Disease (early epileptic seizures can
interfere with normal brain
development)
 Brain damage may not always affect
language

 Phineas Gage
Foreman of railway
construction gang. In 1848
while working on a
railway, an accidental
explosion caused a tamping
iron bar to shoot through
his head (entered under his
left
cheek bone) and land 25-30
yards behind him.
 Except for personality
changes, language not
affected.
Speech vs. language
impairments
 not all speech
disturbances are
aphasia
 Stephen Hawking

can’t speak but can still

lecture through other
means:
knowledge of
language intact)
 Speech vs. language
impairments

 Language impairment:
 Language knowledge, or some aspect of it,
is
impaired.
 Difficulties must be in ability to
comprehend, repeat or produce
meaningful speech, but are not caused by
simple sensory or motor deficits.
 Aphasia: a language deficit caused by
damage to the brain

 Many types of aphasia, but two very

important ones:
 Broca’s aphasia (a type of non-fluent
aphasia)
 Wernicke’s aphasia (a type of fluent
aphasia)
 Speech samples: Broca’s aphasics

 Patient trying to describe the Cookie Jar Theft

 woman …/pa/ no…cleaning …plate …

water …pouring …ground…two kids …
boy …stool …wobbling stool …give …
take it …cookies
 (samples from Varlokosta & Edwards 2002)
 produce slow, laborious, hesitant speech
with little intonation (dysprosody)

 have obvious articulation difficulties

(speech apraxia)

 produce many phonemic paraphasias

(speech errors that result from phonemic
substitution and omissions, e.g. ‘likstip’ for
‘lipstick’).
 Wernicke = Fluent Aphasia

 Fluent aphasics have no difficulty

producing speech (it is fluent), but have a
great deal of difficulty selecting,
organising and monitoring their own
language production
 (Broca’s aphasics are aware of their own
language difficulties, Wernicke’s aphasics
generally unaware of their deficit).
 Wernicke’s aphasics produce speech
that typically sounds very good:
there are no long pauses; sentence
intonation normal; function words
used appropriately; word order
usually syntactically correct.

 But the person rarely makes any

sense.
 Speech samples: Wernicke’s aphasics
 Yes, well, that’s a .. that’s the ordinary karmiebrayzie
and the boy’s falling over up here …up here the …but
his…on here .. he’s made a terrible …and she’s tried to
push that and she shouldn’t done should she …but I
can’t see the boy he’s been around the first time to get
hold of her before she’s gone really but er…but stupid
really…all the water going down here which should be
wrong, you see…I can see that part …then she got XX
and he’s got …but there’s nothing here and er…and
she’s
got this…trying out down here …so he fall over and fall
in the water I imagine terrible
 Behavioural/ Social

 Attention Deficit
 Oppositional Disorder
 Antisocial Disorder
 Conduct Disorder
 ADD (ADHD)
 Chronic disability of impulsivity,
performance appropriatness
 Most commonly diagnosed disorder
 Huge comorbidity with other
disorders
 More males than females
 Highly variable performance
 Weak short-term memory
 Impaired sense of time – hindsight or
foresight
 Poor planning
 Trying harder = frustration
 Impulsive, not aggressive
 Blurts out answers, comments can be
socially inappropriate
 Doesn’t learn from mistakes
 Academic

 Dyslexia
 Writing disorder
 Math Disabilities
 Visual Problem
 Memory Difficulty
 Personality Disorders

 Avoidance/Paranoid
 Learned Helplessness
 Depression
 Anxiety/Distress
 Obsessive Disorder
 Our response?

Bring about changes in the brain:

Caring for the brain?
Global enrichment?
Plasticity?
Remedy specific skills?
 Options for Educators

 Ignore
 Accommodate
 Intervine