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Saturday, November 7, 2009

Why patients who had a stroke and show signs of Broca's aphasia may also show deviation of the tongue?


Answer:
The area of the brain that is responsible for expressive language is called Broca's area. A stroke in that portion of the brain results in Broca's type aphasia, a non-fluent aphasia. Very often a motor speech component will accompany Broca's aphasia because Broca's area is located very close to the motor centers that control oral movement of the articulators. Therefore, many Broca's aphasia patients exhibit either apraxia, dysarthria or both. Dysarthria is most easily explained as a weakness of the musculature due to neurological damage. If a person has dysarthria, the weak side will correspond to the damaged area of the brain. In most right handed individuals, Broca's area is located on the left side of the brain and the stroke would affect the right side. This would result (usually) in right sided weakness of the tongue. When someone sticks their tongue out, the stronger side will pull more than the weaker side, and thus the tongue will deviate (pointing away from the weak side and toward the side of the brain that was damaged). I hope this explanation is sufficient. If you have further questions feel free to check out my aphasia speech site http://groups.yahoo.com.group.speechconn... or email SPEECHCONNECT-subscribe@yahoog...
Carolyn
just a guess, but maybe it has to due with lesion of the hypoglossal nerve or control of the hypoglossal nerve.When the hypoglossal nerve, which deals with most of the muscles of the tongue is lesioned, the tongue deviates toward the side of the lesion.

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