| Library / English Dictionary |
APHASIA
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Inability to use or understand language (spoken or written) because of a brain lesion
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("aphasia" is a kind of...):
brain disease; brain disorder; encephalopathy (any disorder or disease of the brain)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "aphasia"):
acoustic aphasia; auditory aphasia; word deafness (an impairment in understanding spoken language that is not attributable to hearing loss)
associative aphasia; conduction aphasia (aphasia in which the lesion is assumed to be in the association tracts connecting the various language centers in the brain; patient's have difficulty repeating a sentence just heard)
global aphasia; total aphasia (loss of all ability to communicate)
ataxic aphasia; Broca's aphasia; expressive aphasia; motor aphasia; nonfluent aphasia (aphasia in which expression by speech or writing is severely impaired)
amnesic aphasia; amnestic aphasia; anomia; anomic aphasia; nominal aphasia (inability to name objects or to recognize written or spoken names of objects)
transcortical aphasia (a general term for aphasia that results from lesions outside of Broca's area or Wernicke's area of the cerebral cortex)
alexia; visual aphasia; word blindness (inability to perceive written words)
fluent aphasia; impressive aphasia; receptive aphasia; sensory aphasia; Wernicke's aphasia (aphasia characterized by fluent but meaningless speech and severe impairment of the ability understand spoken or written words)
Derivation:
aphasic (unable to speak because of a brain lesion)
aphasic (related to or affected by aphasia)
Context examples:
A team led by Dr. Daniel Mirman at Drexel University and Dr. Myrna F. Schwartz at the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute set out to better understand the basis of language by studying people with aphasia using both neuroimaging and behavioral assessment.
(Brain Mapping of Language Impairments, NIH)
