Communication Disorders in Frontal Lobe

Communication Disorders in Frontal Lobe

1. Right Hemisphere Dysfunctions

   • Disordered Formulation
     • damage to prefrontal area
     • communication characteristics
       • abnormalities in emotional, flattening, inappropriate and frequently vulgar behavior, apathy, and confabulation
       • difficulties in selecting a socially acceptable language
       • confabulation with disorganized narrative in discourse
       • impulsively responds
   • Decreased Output
     • damage to medial frontal lobe
     • communication characteristics
       • reduction in language production , prosody, and verbal output (mild-moderate)
   • Defective Pragmatic Discourse
     • damage to dorsolateral frontal area
     • communication characteristics
       • deficits in pragmatics
       • frequent irrelevant and tangential comments
       • difficulties organizing a coherent narrative , interpreting analogies, ironies, and general, figurative language
       • may have concrete, blunt, impolite discourse
   • Dysprosody
     • damage to lower Motor cortex and posterior operculum; full operculum plus lower motor cortex
       • results in affective motor dysprosody
     • communication characteristics
       • difficulties using melodic contour in verbal output
       • speech is flat without appropriate prosodic quality
       • difficulties with emotional communication (sadness, irony, sarcasm, happiness)

2. Left Hemisphere Dysfunctions

   • Aphemia
     • damage to lower Motor cortex and posterior operculum
     • communication characteristics
       • lower facial paresis may still exist
       • language function is intact or minimally impaired
       • at first, the person is mute and hemiparetic, but conditions rapidly improves
       • speech is slow, effortful
       • dysarthria is observed
       • language recovers to a normal state most often though dysarthria remains
   • Broca's Area Aphasia
     • dameges to full operculum plus lower motor cortex
     • communication characteristics
       • nonfluent expressive language
       • poorly articulated
       • consists of short phrases that are agrammatical and produced with great effort
       • language comprehension is superior to verbal production, but not normal
       • lack of fluency, disintegration of speech kinetic melodies
       • language repetition is poor having phonetic deviations, phonologic paraphasias, simplifications of syllabic groups, and iterations
       • repetition and production of automatic series are superior to spontaneous language
       • difficultly pointing and naming
   • Mutism
     • damage to medial frontal lobe
     • communication characteristics
       • inability or unwillingness to speak
   • Reduced Formulation aka Impoverished Discourse
     • damage to prefrontal area
     • communication characteristics
       • loss /reduction of spontaneous language, difficulty organizing expressive language, poor verbal generation, and defects in verbal reasoning
       • defects in paralinguistic
       • lesions limited to polar regions are associated with personality changes
   • Transcortical Motor Aphasia
     • damage to dorsolateral frontal
     • communication characteristics
       • preserved repetition, good comprehension
       • lack of verbal initiative associated with left prefrontal pathology
       • initial mutism followed by language initiation disturbances

3. Katie Murphy

4. References: Peach, R.K., & Shapiro, L.P. (2012). Cognition acquired language disorders: An information processing approach (pp. 153-155). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Inc.

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