Wernicke's aphasia

n. Language disorder characterized by fluent speech, paraphasias (wrongly produced words), and language understanding defects. Different names, such as sensory aphasia, receptive aphasia, and central aphasia, have been used to refer to this particular type of language disorder. In Wernicke’s aphasia spontaneous language is abundant and sometimes excessive. Grammatical structure is acceptable, although an excessive number of grammatical elements – sometimes wrongly selected – can be observed (so-called paragrammatism). Prosody and articulation are correct. There is a significant decrease in the number of meaningful words, potentially resulting in an “empty speech.” Paraphasias (incorrect words) and neologisms (newly constructed words) are usually abundant. Paraphasias can be due to errors in phoneme sequences (phonological paraphasias) and to errors in the selection of the words (verbal paraphasias). Sometimes language is abundant but completely nonunderstandable. This type of language is referred as jargon aphasia (or jargonaphasia). Language understanding is abnormal. In extreme cases, the patient simply does not understand anything; more frequently, there is a certain level of language understanding, limited to high-frequency words and simple sentences. Language understanding is not steady but fluctuates. Some patients who have Wernicke’s aphasia have difficulties in discriminating phonemes, particularly acoustically similar phonemes. Verbal memory defects are routinely observed. – AA

▶ See also AUDITORY AGNOSIA, AUDITORY CORTEX, AUDITORY PERCEPTION, CENTRAL DEAFNESS, JARGON APHASIA, WERNICK'S AREA, and WORD DEAFNESS