Global aphasia

Global aphasia, like all forms of aphasia, is a type of language disorder caused by damage to the brain. Global aphasia is a severe form of nonfluent aphasia that affects both receptive and expressive language skills. Severe, acquired impairments of communicative abilities are present across all language modalities, and often no single communicative modality is notably better than another. Specifically, global aphasia leads to severe impairment of production, comprehension, and repetition of language. Patients with global aphasia are unable to speak much; they may be able to say a few short utterances, but their overall production ability is very poor. Furthermore, patients with global aphasia have an extremely impaired ability to understand what others say. Lastly, those with global aphasia are almost fully incapable of repeating words and utterances. This type of aphasia often results from a large lesion of the left perisylvian cortex and is associated with damage to Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area, and insular regions which are associated with aspects of language. Global aphasia profoundly impairs oral and written language production as well as auditory and written comprehension, yet a person with global aphasia may still be able to express themselves through facial expressions, gestures and intonation.