motor aphasia

n. Acquired language disorder characterized by agrammatical, nonfluent, poorly articulated speech, composed by short utterances, which is produced with significant effort and due to a brain pathology involving the third frontal gyrus (Brodmann's 44 area) and surrounding areas. It is also known as Broca's aphasia, expressive aphasia, or efferent motor aphasia. Usually, the damage is located in the left hemisphere. Expressive language is basically composed by nouns with an evident decrease in grammatical elements (agrammatism). The expressive defect in speech has been named in different ways, but most frequently it is referred as apraxia of speech. Level of language understanding is superior to verbal production, although it is not completely normal because of the difficulties in grammatical understanding. Language repetition is abnormal: phonetic deviations, phonological paraphasias, simplification of complex syllables, and iterations are observed. Repeating grammatical elements is harder than repeating nouns. Verbal automatisms (e.g., to count) are better than spontaneous language; signing is also better than speaking. Pointing/naming is deficient, but pointing (e.g., show me the pencil) is notoriously superior to naming (e.g., what is the name of this object?). – AA