Expressive aphasia

Expressive aphasia, also known as Broca's aphasia, is a type of aphasia characterized by partial loss of the ability to produce language (spoken, manual, or written), although comprehension generally remains intact. A person with expressive aphasia will exhibit effortful speech. Speech generally includes important content words but leaves out function words that have more grammatical significance than physical meaning, such as prepositions and articles. This is known as "telegraphic speech". The person's intended message may still be understood, but their sentence will not be grammatically correct. In very severe forms of expressive aphasia, a person may only speak using single word utterances. Typically, comprehension is mildly to moderately impaired in expressive aphasia due to difficulty understanding complex grammar. It is caused by acquired damage to the anterior regions of the brain, such as Broca's area. It is one subset of a larger family of disorders known collectively as aphasia. Expressive aphasia contrasts with receptive aphasia, in which patients are able to speak in grammatical sentences that lack semantic significance and generally also have trouble with comprehension. Expressive aphasia differs from dysarthria, which is typified by a patient's inability to properly move the muscles of the tongue and mouth to produce speech. Expressive aphasia also differs from apraxia of speech, which is a motor disorder characterized by an inability to create and sequence motor plans for speech. Broca's (expressive) aphasia is a type of non-fluent aphasia in which an individual's speech is halting and effortful. Misarticulations or distortions of consonants and vowels, namely phonetic dissolution, are common. Individuals with expressive aphasia may only produce single words, or words in groups of two or three. Long pauses between words are common and multi-syllabic words may be produced one syllable at a time with pauses between each syllable.