08:00 am
Friday 01 April 2022
Agencies:
The family of movie star Bruce Willis announced that the 67-year-old action hero will retire from acting due to “health problems”, most notably his loss of ability to speak.
And the family stated in a post via Instagram that “Bruce suffered from some health problems and it was recently diagnosed that he suffers from aphasia (aphasia), which affects his cognitive abilities.”
What is aphasia?
The condition is diagnosed when a person has difficulty with language or speech.
It usually occurs due to damage to the left side of the brain (for example, following a stroke), according to “Russia Today”.
According to the NHS, people with aphasia often have a problem with the four main ways people understand and use them. Which:
• reading.
• Listen.
• talking.
• Writing.
As the NHS explains, speaking problems are perhaps the most obvious, and people with aphasia may make mistakes in the words they use.
The NHS explains: “This can sometimes be using the wrong sounds in a word, choosing the wrong word, or incorrectly putting words together.”
What causes aphasia?
“The most common cause of aphasia is brain damage from a stroke — a blockage or rupture of a blood vessel in the brain,” the Mayo Clinic explains.
The interruption of blood flow to the brain leads to the death or damage of brain cells in the areas that control language.
“Brain damage from a severe head injury, tumor, infection, or degenerative process can also cause aphasia. In these cases, aphasia usually occurs with other types of cognitive problems, such as memory problems or confusion.”
Other reasons include:
• Primary progressive aphasia: The term used for language difficulty that develops gradually. This is due to the gradual deterioration of brain cells located in the language networks. Sometimes this type of aphasia develops into a more general dementia.
• Sometimes temporary episodes of aphasia can occur. This can be due to migraines, seizures, or a transient ischemic attack (TIA). A TIA occurs when blood flow to an area of the brain is temporarily blocked. People who have had a transient ischemic attack are at increased risk of having a stroke in the near future.
Can it be treated?
After a brain injury, massive changes occur in the brain, helping it to recover.
“As a result, people with aphasia often see a significant improvement in their language and communication abilities in the first few months, even without treatment,” explains the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).
“However, in many cases, the effects of aphasia remain following this initial recovery period. In these cases, speech and language therapy is used to help patients regain their ability to communicate,” continues NIDCD.
Research has shown that language and communication abilities can continue to improve for many years, sometimes accompanied by new activity in brain tissue near the damaged area.
Some factors that may influence the amount of improvement include the cause of the brain injury, the area of the brain that is damaged and to what extent, and the individual’s age and health.
According to the NIDCD, treatment of aphasia aims to improve a person’s ability to communicate by helping to use remaining language abilities, restoring language abilities as much as possible, and learning other ways to communicate, such as gestures, images, or the use of electronic devices.
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