aphasia

aphasia , language disturbance caused by a lesion of the brain, making an individual partially or totally impaired in his ability to speak, write, or comprehend the meaning of spoken or written words. It is distinguished from functional disorders such as stammering or stuttering, and from impaired speech due to physical defects in the organs used for speaking. Treatment consists of reeducation; the oral and lip-reading methods employed in the education of deaf and mute children have been found to be of assistance in therapy.

aphasia Group of disorders of language arising from disease of or damage to the brain. In aphasia, a person has problems formulating or comprehending speech and difficulty in reading and writing. See also brain disorders

aphasia (dysphasia) (ă-fay-ziă) n. a disorder of language affecting the generation and content of speech and its understanding. It is caused by damage to the language-dominant half of the brain, usually the left hemisphere in a right-handed person. expressive a. difficulty in producing language. receptive a. difficulty with comprehension of the spoken word.
—aphasic adj.