Wernicke's aphasia

Question 1

Fluent or non-fluent?

Answer 1

Fluent

Question 2

Location

Answer 2

Wernicke’s area- situated inferior to the primary auditory cortex in the left temporal lobe.

Question 3

Also known as

Answer 3

Sensory aphasia

Receptive aphasia

Question 4

Auditory Comprehension

Answer 4

Impaired
If aphasia is severe they can have difficulty understanding short and simple language.
Difficulty understanding words that are similar in meaning e.g. semantically linked like spoon and fork.
May have difficulty differentiating between real words and non-words.

Question 5

Reading comprehension

Answer 5

Also impaired.

Question 6

Verbal Expression

Answer 6

Plentiful output
Fluently produced
Long phrase length
lots of repetitions and retrials can occur when word finding difficulties arise
Speech tends to be filled with semantic paraphasias e.g. dog for cat and phonemic paraphasias e.g. mitchen for kitchen.
Neologisms present e.g. nonsense words like bagoo for table.
Function words present.
Speech is empty, meaningless.

Question 7

Written expression

Answer 7

As with verbal expression- usually plentiful output but without content, paraphasias present.

Question 8

Other features

Answer 8

Hemiplegia is less common as not as close to motor cortex
However
Visual field deficit e.g. hemianopia is common due to lesion’s close proximity to the optic nerve tract.
Poor awareness/ insight if errors
Topic drift can also be an issue- slt will have to refocus the individual back to the topic/task