Question

What are the similarities between Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia? What are the differences? What can cause aphasia?

Answer 1

Broca's area is the motor speech area and it helps in movements that are required for producing speech. When there is a problem in this area, a patient understands the speech of others, is not able to produce any speech him. This condition is called Broca's aphasia. Damage to Broca's area leads to Broca's aphasia which results in both comprehension and production deficits.

Wernicke's area is located in the parietal and temporal lobe and it is the sensory area. It is used in understanding speech and using the correct words to express our thoughts. When there is a problem in this area, a patient may be able to produce speech, but cannot understand the speech of others. This is called Wernicke's aphasia. The problems associated with Wernicke's aphasia are:

Semantic errors

Word structure errors:

Completely made-up words (these are called neologisms)

Comprehension problems

Writing and reading problems, reading impossible (can identify words, but can't make sense of text).

Anomia: cannot reliably find and use nouns (although often they substitute a semantically related word for the appropriate word).

They are often completely unaware of their problem (in sharp contrast with Broca's patients!)

However, the similarity of both the aphasia is the resultant inability to understand or produce speech and both are a result of the brain damage.

Brain damage caused by a severe head injury, a tumor, an infection or a degenerative process causes aphasia, (MayoClinic).