Transcortical Aphasias

Dissimilar to the others, it occurs in the case that the lesion is present on the border between medial and posterior, or anterior and medial. If the lesion is in front, the patient is able to understand what is said but never speaks. If it’s at the back, it would be like Wernicke’s aphasia. If it’s located on both sides, it would be a transcortical mixed aphasia. Regardless of the type it is of, this is an aphasia in which repetition is perfectly preserved. Its communication with other networks is impaired, although it is only the language networks that is not impaired. That’s why repetition is preserved.

Transcortical Motor Aphasia

The patients lose the ability of initiative. They have impaired speech, but they don’t care. They have a tongue-tied speech, while having relatively preserved comprehension and repetition. Even the patients who do not speak at all can easily repeat a word said to them.

Transcortical Sensory Aphasia

Despite having troubles in finding words, the patients speak fluently. Although the don’t understand what they are told, they can fluently repeat what was said.

Transcortical Mixed Aphasia

It is similar to global aphasia. There is a damage separating the language area from the other parts of the brain. The language area remains robust in itself. Thus, the patient is able to repeat and analyze sounds. These patients have a tongue-tied speech, impaired comprehension, though repetition is preserved.

Anomic Aphasia

Anomia means “being unable to name”. It could be said that it is the best type of aphasia. These patients can talk fluently and understandably. In contradiction to Wernicke’s aphasia, they have a decent comprehension and don’t have verbal or neo-logistic paraphasia. Nonetheless, the speeches of these patients lack objective nouns. For instance, in order to say “Could you pass me the glass inside the window?” they say “Could you pass me the thing inside the thing?” When a naming examination is carried out thought the demonstration of the objects one by one, it can be seen that this skill is extremely impaired. The patients cannot say the name of the object, instead, they describe the object. Like “we write with this thing”, “it is used to drink water”. However, the patient has a normal repetition. These patients cannot find the word, they don’t remember the name of the objects. Having quite an impaired naming, they generally say “thing”. Besides, their comprehension, reading and writing are preserved.

Anomic Aphasia is not a common syndrome with this typical form it has. On the other hand, all Wernicke’s aphasias pass through the anomic aphasia level in one phase of the recovery. Although anomic aphasia is generally caused by temporo-occipital lesions, or temporo-parietal lesions extending to the angular gyrus (where reading and writing are also heavily impaired), anomic aphasia can also be seen in different anatomic localizations (in this case, the patient’s reading and writing may remain intact).