According to Agence France-Presse, on March 30, local time, the family of Hollywood star Bruce Willis posted on social media, revealing that 67 At the age of 20, Willis suffered from aphasia and stopped acting. This has drawn more attention to this incomprehensible communication barrier.
What is aphasia?
Hugo Botha, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in the United States, explains: “Aphasia means that people have problems with language, they are not born with it. The most common cause is stroke. or head injury.”
Experts stress that while the disorder affects people’s comprehension of speech and the written word, it usually does not affect intelligence.
According to a survey by the National Aphasia Society, less than 9 percent of people know what aphasia is. In other words, most people do not know what aphasia is.
Johns Hopkins cognitive scientist Brenda Rapp explained: “While it is usually triggered by a specific one-time event such as a stroke, there are other possibilities, such as neural Degenerative disease. In this case, the damage is progressive and treatment focuses on preventing further loss of function.”
Willis’ family did not share the reason for his diagnosis in their statement.
What are the different forms of aphasia?
The brain system that manages language is a very complex machine, Rapp says, including choosing the right words and making sounds with the mouth, and hearing the sounds back to the brain to decode their meanings.
Everyone has the occasional experience of forgetting to write a pen, or unable to recall the word when it comes to their mouths,
She adds, “As you can imagine, this happens quite often in people with aphasia.”
Doctors sometimes divide aphasia into broad clinical categories that relate to where the brain damage occurs.
In expressive aphasia, people often understand language well, but have difficulty speaking, says Brooke Hatfield, a speech-language pathologist with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).
People with this type of aphasia may use simple sentences such as “I want to eat.”
In people with receptive aphasia, words are easy to say, but they may be inappropriate, and they themselves have difficulty understanding what they hear.
Speech Therapy
The good news is that in the long run, everyone has a chance to get better, Hatfield said. Some people who had a stroke 30 years ago are still struggling with speech rehabilitation and communication and have made progress.
The brain is extremely plastic, and speech therapy can allow other parts of it to “bypass” barriers in damaged areas and make new connections, Rapp said.
Such therapy can also train people to have a conversation around that topic when they get stuck on a particular word.
Family members can also develop strategies to help themselves be better understood, such as shortening sentences, making sure you are communicating with each other face-to-face and not in another room, And minimize background noise.
Currently, experimental treatments that combine electrical stimulation of the brain with speech therapy have shown promise in restoring function, Rapp said.