Stroke – Symptoms – Language

Transcript

Another important thing to sort of recognize is that language and your brain is lateralized. In the vast majority of people language is on the left side of the brain. Sometimes it can be on the right side of the brain, but the vast majority is on the left. And so when a stroke involves the language area, it can be sometimes hard to recognize because it just seems like that person’s confused or acting strangely, they may not even have any weakness at all. But when languages is involved, we call that aphasia and people can have a few different issues. They can have a difficult time expressing words so people can, people can often say, I know what I want to say, but I can’t get the words out. That occurs when a stroke involves the inferior frontal lobe on the left side in the area of the brain called the Broca’s area or another area of language is in the back of the brain and the temporal lobe called Wernicke’s area. And when a stroke occurs there, people aren’t able to comprehend things so they can talk but it doesn’t make any sense. They will often sort of say word salad. They’ll say things that don’t make sense or it can be actually kind of tough. You know, you can walk into a room with somebody and you know, they’ll sort of read your body cues and say very simple nonspecific things that sound like it sort of makes sense. Like, hey, how you doing? But if you ask them very specific things like, can you show me two fingers? They can’t comprehend that and do it. So those can be dangerous and easy to miss.