Brain Injury Case Study

Describe the localisation of aquired brain injury. What does this tell us about the functional regions of the brain?

A brain injury is any injury occurring in the brain of a living organism. Brain injuries can be classified along several dimensions. Primary and secondary brain injury are ways to classify the injury processes that occur in brain injury, while focal and diffuse brain injury are ways to classify the extent or location of injury in the brain. There are two main types of brain injuries. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can be either an opened or closed injury to the head. Non traumatic injury which is damage to the brain during the person’s lifetime. Brain injuries can vary from mild to severe depending on how long the patient was

Characterized by anomia, agrammatism and difficulties in articulation. Also known as expressive aphasia. It is caused by left frontal lobe lesions. It is characterized by non-fluent, effortful speech with relatively persevered comprehension. Patients may be mute at the onset of brocas aphasia or may produce only single syllables or words. In some cases, a reiterated word or phrase forms a verbal stereotypy (Howard Gardner 1976). Subsequently the sparse speech is a spontaneous, slow, and effortful and interrupted by pauses that often overshadow the output. However they can also produce unnatural but unusually intelligible speech. They can automatically produce expletives that are correctly articulated and used within a structured setting. John Hughlings noticed this in 1878. He postulated that the right hemisphere produced this no deliberate, emotional verbalization. Patients with brocas aphasia are more articulate and fluent in producing overlearned serial speech as in counting or reciting the alphabet or months of the year, than in generating spontaneous

It can also be known as ‘fluent aphasia’ as ability to produce connecting speech is not very affected. A person affected by this form of aphasia may have profound language comprehension deficits. This form of aphasia occurs when damage has occurred to the posterior portion of the left side of the brain. This area is linked to reading, understanding information and thinking of what to write. This area is known as Wernicke’s area. Luria’s theory suggests that this type of aphasia has three characteristics. A deficit in the categorization of sounds. This is when the patient finds it difficult to isolate significant sound characteristics and classify them into known meaningful systems. Often the patient can speak a great deal. However one might confuse sound characteristics and in turn producing ‘word salad’. This characteristic is known as a defect in speech. Moreover it affects the patient’s ability to write (Kertesz, 1993). If they have difficulty discerning sounds they will not be able to write