In cases where aphasia has been caused by a sudden brain injury, such as a stroke or a severe head injury, the symptoms will usually develop straight after the injury.
In cases where there is gradual damage to the brain as a result of a condition that gets worse over time, such as dementia or a brain tumour, the symptoms may develop gradually.
Broca's aphasia
Someone with Broca's aphasia will usually have the following signs and symptoms:
- slow and halting speech
- they may struggle to get certain words out, such as the names of objects, places or people
- the content of their speech is usually stripped down to the barest elements and only contains some basic nouns and verbs, for example, "want drink" or "go town today"
- their writing ability is often similarly affected
A person with Broca's aphasia may be able to understand spoken language to some degree, but have difficulty understanding grammar. For example, they may be unable to tell the difference in meaning between, "Maureen slapped the naughty boy" and "the naughty boy slapped Maureen."
Their ability to read is usually affected. For example, they may assign different meanings to written words, such as reading ‘symphony’ when the word is actually ‘concert’. They may also lose the ability to sound out written words in their head.
Additional symptoms that are not directly connected to speech and language but can occur in people with Broca's aphasia include:
- an inability to control facial muscles and one or both limbs
- weakness down one side of their body (usually the right side)
Wernicke's aphasia
A person with Wernicke's aphasia will usually have the following signs and symptoms.
- They may be able to speak fluently using long sentences, but their speech contains a lack of meaning and often includes nonsense words. For example, they might say “That was just like time for the next week when the bait”.
- People with Wernicke's aphasia are often unaware of their language problems, especially soon after a stroke, and become frustrated that other people are unable to understand them. However, they may recognise their problems if presented with evidence, such as a video or audio recording of them speaking.
- They may have difficulty understanding spoken language.
- Some people also have similar difficulties with reading written language.
- Their ability to write is affected in a similar way to their speaking ability in that they can write fluently but what they write makes little or no sense.
Additional symptoms can include:
- some loss of vision
- difficulties with arithmetic, such as adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing numbers
- difficulties with spatial orientation, which is the ability to judge accurately where you are positioned in relation to other physical objects, and is often referred to as your sense of direction
- loss of voluntary limb control
Global aphasia
People with global aphasia usually have more brain damage, so they often have symptoms of both Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia. This can cause problems with all aspects of communication, including:
- speaking
- understanding the speech of others
- naming objects, people and places
- repeating other people’s speech
- reading and writing
Additional symptoms can include:
- paralysis of the right side of the body
- some loss of vision
- loss of voluntary control of their limbs
- problems pronouncing certain sounds and words, which is due to difficulties controlling the mouth, tongue and voice box (so it is not specifically associated with aphasia)
