As the name suggests, Wernicke’s aphasia is caused by damage to Wernicke’s area, located near the back of the temporal lobe on the left side of the brain. Being a fluent aphasia, individuals with Wernicke’s aphasia have fluent and connected speech but may have some difficulty with word retrieval. Severely impaired auditory comprehension is the defining symptom of Wernicke’s aphasia, so this should be examined in order to differentiate it from other aphasias and the improvement of which should typically be the foremost target in therapy. Reading comprehension is also affected, as well as naming skills. Therapy with individuals with Wernicke’s aphasia can be difficult because they tend to not be aware of their errors, but some studies have shown that therapy is indeed …show more content…
Another notable fluent aphasia is transcortical sensory. This form of the disorder occurs after damage to the area joining the temporal and parietal lobes and is very similar to Wernicke’s aphasia in its effects on the sufferer’s language. Whereas Wernicke’s aphasia causes significant repetition deficits, in transcortical sensory aphasia repetition is intact and even remarkable. Those with transcortical sensory aphasia are very fluent in their speech, but sentences are typically unrelated and speech is circumlocutory and stereotypic. Echolalic speech is present and reading and auditory comprehension are poor as in Wernicke’s aphasia. Despite having little to no awareness of their speech errors, those with transcortical sensory aphasia typically have a good