Question

Explain the differences and similarities in language abilities in someone with a traumatic brain injury versus someone with right hemisphere brain damage.

Answer 1

Traumatic brain injury causes difficulty in speech ,language,thinking and swallowing problems. Speech and language problems can be understood because of dysarthria ie due to weak speech muscles or apraxia. The major disorder in language are:

Difficulty in initiating a conversation.

Impaired ability to use nonverbal communication effectivly.

Impaired social cognitive skills.

Anomia

Tendency to use tangential speech.

Difficulty comprehensing writtern text. etc

Problems often include word-finding difficulty, poor sentence formation, and lengthy and often faulty descriptions or explanations.For example, when asking for help finding a belt while dressing, an individual may ask for "the circular cow thing" that I used yesterday and before.

RHD is the damage to the right side of the brain.In most people language skill is in left side of brain.Communication deficits associated with right hemisphere injury involve nonliteral language (eg, metaphor, irony, and indirect requests), speech prosody, discourse (eg, humor and story comprehension), and related cognitive abilities, such as inference, working memory, and Theory of Mind (TOM ie, making inferences about the beliefs and emotions of other people to interpret their behavior).