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PubMed1995

Broca's aphasia: a syntactic and/or a morphological disorder? A case study.

The patient described here suffers from Broca's aphasia without a comprehension disorder. She is unique, since she has two speech styles available and she shifts between them spontaneously. One style is characterized by a mild syntactic disorder and the other by a quite severe morphological and syntactic disorder. None of the current theories about the underlying disorder in Broca patients without comprehension deficits can account for the fact that two linguistically different speech styles can occur in one patient, except the adaptation theory. It will be argued that both styles can be explained by the assumption of an impairment to the grammatical encoder (a processor which transforms the preverbal message into a surface structure, Levelt, 1989). This view suggests that the distinction between syntactic and morphological agrammatism could be a matter of strategy, rather than of impairment.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Object scrambling in Dutch Broca's aphasia.

This study focuses on the production of sentences in which objects have been moved without a change in the order of the thematic roles. In Dutch, the basic word order is subject-adverb-object-verb. The object can be moved over the adverb; this is called object scrambling. The difference between the two word orders is pragmatic in nature: in the basic word order the focus is on the object, in the scrambled order, the focus is on the adverb. The aim of the present study is to evaluate if production of constructions with moved objects is impaired in Broca's aphasia and if so, whether that is for syntactic or pragmatic reasons. The results show that for individuals with Broca's aphasia, sentences with the scrambled word order are more difficult to produce than sentences with the basic word order, even if the scrambled order results in a pragmatically more acceptable sentence. This falsifies several theories of production in Broca's aphasia and shows an interesting parallel to the performance on comprehension tasks.

Aphasia, Broca↗

PubMed1988

Impaired grammar with normal fluency and phonology. Implications for Broca's aphasia.

Extensive testing of grammatical function, including assessment of spontaneous language, inflectional morphology, ability to produce grammatical structures, syntactic comprehension and grammatical judgement, was carried out in 2 patients with large dominant frontal lobe lesions, including but not confined to, the third frontal convolution. Both patients were fluent and had normal articulation and phonological production and neither was agrammatic, suggesting that even very large frontal lesions do not produce Broca's aphasia and that language cortex proper is confined to the postcentral perisylvian region. Both patients were impaired in the use of more complex syntactic structures and one, who in addition had severe generalized impairment in frontal lobe function, also had impaired judgement regarding the use and placement of functors. These data provide further support for the dissociability of syntactic and morphological aspects of grammar in aphasic patients and, together with other studies, link these functions with the frontal lobe and the postcentral perisylvian cortex, respectively. The sparing of grammatical judgement in 1 patient, despite a very extensive lesion, suggests that very large portions of the frontal lobe are involved in grammatical function. The nature of frontal lobe function in syntax appears to be congruent with the role of the frontal lobes in other aspects of behaviour.

Adult↗

PubMed1994

The effects of task variation on the production of grammatical morphology in Broca's aphasia: a multiple case study.

Generally task variation is not taken into account in discussions about agrammatism in Broca's aphasia. Both free speech and speech under constrained conditions are classified as "agrammatic speech." In this study, we investigated the effects of task variation on the character of agrammatic speech. We employed three types of task situations, an interview and two picture description tasks, to elicit speech from 16 Dutch and 3 German Broca's aphasics. The two picture description tasks differed in the extent to which they necessitated the production of grammatical morphology. Various task-dependent changes in the character of agrammatic speech were observed. Overall, omission rates of grammatical morphemes went down and substitution rates tended to go up in picture description as compared to free conversation. Results are discussed by contrasting two explanatory concepts, task interaction and strategic variation.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Thematic role assignment in patients with Broca's aphasia: sentence-picture matching electrified.

An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate on-line thematic role assignment during sentence-picture matching in patients with Broca's aphasia. Subjects were presented with a picture that was followed by an auditory sentence. The sentence either matched the picture or mismatched the visual information depicted. Sentences differed in complexity, and ranged from simple active semantically irreversible sentences to passive semantically reversible sentences. ERPs were recorded while subjects were engaged in sentence-picture matching. In addition, reaction time and accuracy were measured. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (N=10), non-aphasic patients with a right hemisphere (RH) lesion (N=8), and healthy aged-matched controls (N=15). The results of this study showed that, in neurologically unimpaired individuals, thematic role assignment in the context of visual information was an immediate process. This in contrast to patients with Broca's aphasia who demonstrated no signs of on-line sensitivity to the picture-sentence mismatches. The syntactic contribution to the thematic role assignment process seemed to be diminished given the reduction and even absence of P600 effects. Nevertheless, Broca patients showed some off-line behavioral sensitivity to the sentence-picture mismatches. The long response latencies of Broca's aphasics make it likely that off-line response strategies were used.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Comprehension of passives in Broca's aphasia.

Drai and Grodzinsky have statistically analyzed a large corpus of data on the comprehension of passives by patients with Broca's aphasia. The data come, according to Drai and Grodzinsky, from binary choice tasks. Among the languages that are analyzed are Dutch and German. Drai and Grodzinsky argue that Dutch and German speaking Broca patients should be relatively good (that is, perform above chance) on comprehension of passive sentences, since in Dutch and German passives the relative order of the object and lexical verb is the underlying order and hence no movement takes place. We will demonstrate that both their linguistic arguments and their selection of Dutch data are invalid.

Aphasia, Broca↗

PubMed2005

Patterns of comprehension performance in agrammatic Broca's aphasia: a test of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis.

We tested the core prediction of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH) of agrammatic Broca's aphasia, which contends that such patients' comprehension performance is normal for active reversible sentences but at chance level for passive reversible sentences. We analyzed the comprehension performance of 38 Italian Broca's aphasics with verified damage to Broca's area, who completed sentence-to-picture matching tasks using active and passive reversible sentences as stimuli. The results failed to confirm the predictions made by TDH: only a small minority (15%) performed at chance on passive sentences and better than chance on active sentences. Furthermore, the distribution of the 38 subjects' performance on passive sentences differed from that predicted by the TDH since many more subjects performed at better-than-chance levels than expected. We discuss the implication of these results for claims about the distribution of language processing mechanisms in the brain.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

The critical role of group studies in neuropsychology: comprehension regularities in Broca's aphasia.

We reexamine the empirical record of the comprehension abilities of Broca's aphasic patients. We establish clear, commonly accepted, selection criteria and obtain a pool of results. We then subject these results to a detailed statistical analysis and show that these patients comprehend certain canonical sentences (actives, subject relatives, and clefts with agentive predicates) at above-chance levels, whereas comprehension of sentences that contain deviations from canonicity (passives, object-gap relatives, and clefts) is distinct and is at chance. That the latter is the case, and patients indeed guess at such structures, we show by comparing the distribution of individual results in passive comprehension to that of a model for such guessing-an analogous series of tosses of an unbiased coin. The two distributions are virtually identical. We conclude that the group's performance is stable, and well-delineated, despite intersubject variation whose source is now identified. This means that certain comprehension tests may not always be used for the diagnosis of individual patients, but they do characterize the group. It also means that group studies are not just a valid option in neuropsychology; they are a must, since demonstrations like ours indiciate very clearly that single-case studies may be misleading. As we show, the findings from any one patient, without the context of a group, may give a distorted picture of the pathological reality. Our conclusions thus promote studies of groups of brain-damaged patients as a central tool for the investigation of brain/behavior relations.

Aphasia, Broca↗

PubMed1977

Preservation of singing in Broca's aphasia.

Twenty-four right-handed, right hemiparetic patients with Broca's aphasia were examined for their singing capacity. Twenty-one (87.5%) produced good melogy. Twelve of these (57%) produced good text words while singing. It is speculated that the right hemisphere is dominant over the left for singing capacity. The relationship between melodic and text singing was also discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Word-category violations in patients with Broca's aphasia: an ERP study.

An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate on-line syntactic processing in patients with Broca's aphasia. Subjects were visually presented with sentences that were either syntactically correct or contained violations of word-category. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (N = 11), non-aphasic patients with a right hemisphere (RH) lesion (N = 9), and healthy aged-matched controls (N = 15). Both control groups appeared sensitive to the violations of word-category as shown by clear P600/SPS effects. The Broca patients displayed only a very reduced and delayed P600/SPS effect. The results are discussed in the context of a lexicalist parsing model. It is concluded that Broca patients are hindered to detect on-line violations of word-category, if word class information is incomplete or delayed available.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Comparison of rehabilitation outcome in patients with aphasic and non-aphasic traumatic brain injury.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the functional, cognitive and disability status of aphasic and non-aphasic traumatic brain injury patients. DESIGN: A prospective comparative study in which 103 patients with traumatic brain injury participated. SUBJECTS: Fifty-one aphasic and 52 non-aphasic patients with traumatic brain injury. METHODS: Functional Independence Measure and Disability Rating Scale were used to determine functional status and disability. Cognitive status was evaluated by the Mini-Mental Status Examination. Aphasic patients were evaluated using the Gülhane Aphasia Test for language disorders. RESULTS: The most frequent type of aphasia was Broca aphasia at 26.49% followed by anomic at 19.6% and trans-cortical motor at 15.6%. Functional Independence Measure, Disability Rating Scale and Mini-Mental Status Examination scores at admission and at discharge showed significant differences in aphasic patients (p<0.001). There were no significant differences in the Functional Independence Measure, Disability Rating Scale and Mini-Mental Status Examination gains between the aphasic and non-aphasic patients (p>0.01). CONCLUSION: Although aphasia could be accepted as a negative prognostic indicator in patients with traumatic brain injury, we could not detect any difference in functional and cognitive gains between the aphasic and non-aphasic patients.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Melodic intonation in the rehabilitation of Romanian aphasics with bucco-lingual apraxia.

The main objective of the present study was to assess the efficiency of the melodic intonation therapy (MIT) in the rehabilitation of Romanian aphasics. Eighty predominantly Broca aphasics used the melodic intonation therapy when no other therapy methods were very efficient. The speech therapist intonated the respective word, then together with the patient and finally let him continue alone. The control group counted 80 aphasics and it applied other therapy methods. Each patient, regardless of the group, was tested twice, before and after therapy. Since most of the patients displayed severe language disorders, and other therapy methods failed in rehabilitating them, MIT was considered an efficient method in the early stages of Broca aphasia with bucco-lingual apraxia.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Lexical processing of vocabulary class in patients with Broca's aphasia: an event-related brain potential study on agrammatic comprehension.

This paper presents electrophysiological evidence of an impairment in the on-line processing of word class information in patients with Broca's aphasia with agrammatic comprehension. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the scalp while Broca patients and non-aphasic control subjects read open- and closed-class words that appeared one at a time on a PC screen. Separate waveforms were computed for open- and closed-class words. The non-aphasic control subjects showed a modulation of an early left anterior negativity in the 210-325ms as a function of vocabulary class (VC), and a late left anterior negative shift to closed-class words in the 400-700ms epoch. An N400 effect was present in both control subjects and Broca patients. We have taken the early electrophysiological differences to reflect the first availability of word-category information from the mental lexicon. The late differences can be related to post-lexical processing. In contrast to the control subjects, the Broca patients showed no early VC effect and no late anterior shift to closed-class words. The results support the view that an incomplete and/or delayed availability of word-class information might be an important factor in Broca's agrammatic comprehension.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Electrophysiological manifestations of open- and closed-class words in patients with Broca's aphasia with agrammatic comprehension. An event-related brain potential study.

This paper presents electrophysiological data on the on-line processing of open- and closed-class words in patients with Broca's aphasia with agrammatic comprehension. Event-related brain potentials were recorded from the scalp when Broca patients and non-aphasic control subjects were visually presented with a story in which the words appeared one at a time on the screen. Separate waveforms were computed for open- and closed-class words. The non-aphasic control subjects showed clear differences between the processing of open- and closed-class words in an early (210-375 ms) and a late (400-700 ms) time-window. The early electrophysiological differences reflect the first manifestation of the availability of word-category information from the mental lexicon. The late differences presumably relate to post-lexical semantic and syntactic processing. In contrast to the control subjects, the Broca patients showed no early vocabulary class effect and only a limited late effect. The results suggest that an important factor in the agrammatic comprehension deficit of Broca's aphasics is a delayed and/or incomplete availability of word-class information.

Adult↗

PubMed1980

Crossed aphasia in a dextral: a clinicopathological study.

Severe Broca aphasia and left hemiplegia without right limb apraxia occurred suddenly in a right-handed man with no personal or family history of left-handedness. Postmortem examination showed infarction of the right hemisphere, limited almost entirely to the precentral gyrus. In this patient, cerebral dominance for speech lay in the right hemisphere, but dominance for limb praxis lay in the left. This case provides evidence that cerebral dominance for speech and handedness in dextrals may be dissociated. It also suggests that lesions of the precentral gyrus are of major importance in producing Broca aphasia.

Aged↗

PubMed1989

A signal processing component to Broca's aphasia functor deficits.

We conducted a modified replication of K. M. Heilman and R. J. Scholes [Cortex 12, 258-265, 1976] test of functor comprehension in aphasia, controlling the acoustic dimensions of the key function words: 9 Broca patients heard 4 sentence pairs differing only in the post-verb placement of the. They made forced choices between 4 line drawings: one which depicted the correct action, one which depicted the action of the other member in the pair, and two which contained depictions of different figures and actions altogether. Each of the 8 sentences was played in 2 conditions: one with NORMAL intonation, and another with an acoustically more SALIENT post-verbal the. Both of Heilman and Scholes' principal results were successfully replicated, and a SALIENT effect was also discovered, supporting a signal processing component to the Broca syndrome functor deficit.

Aphasia↗

PubMed1982

Intonation in Broca's aphasia.

The intonation contours of the sentence "Construisons notre maison" produced by a group of Broca's aphasic patients were compared to those of this same sentence produced by a group of normal speakers. It was found that the Broca's aphasic patients demonstrated significantly restricted ranges of intonation when compared to the productions of the normal subjects. Different possible underlying mechanisms for this intonation compression are then discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

ERP effects of subject-verb agreement violations in patients with Broca's aphasia.

This article presents electrophysiological data on on-line syntactic processing during auditory sentence comprehension in patients with Broca's aphasia. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the scalp while subjects listened to sentences that were either syntactically correct or contained violations of subject-verb agreement. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (n = 10), nonaphasic patients with a right-hemisphere (RH) lesion (n = 5), and healthy aged-matched controls (n = 12). The healthy, control subjects showed a P600/SPS effect as response to the agreement violations. The nonaphasic patients with an RH lesion showed essentially the same pattern. The overall group of Broca patients did not show this sensitivity. However, the sensitivity was modulated by the severity of the syntactic comprehension impairment. The largest deviation from the standard P600/SPS effect was found in the patients with the relatively more severe syntactic comprehension impairment. In addition, ERPs to tones in a classical tone oddball paradigm were also recorded. Similar to the normal control subjects and RH patients, the group of Broca patients showed a P300 effect in the tone oddball condition. This indicates that aphasia in itself does not lead to a general reduction in all cognitive ERP effects. It was concluded that deviations from the standard P600/SPS effect in the Broca patients reflected difficulties with on-line maintaining of number information across clausal boundaries for establishing subject-verb agreement.

Acoustic Stimulation↗