Nominal aphasia is a language impairment caused by brain injury, resulting in difficulty remembering names or words. Patients may use indirect language to describe objects they can’t remember. The condition is not associated with loss of intelligence or memory, and can affect different types of word recall. Another type of nominal aphasia, called averbia, results from damage to Broca’s area and causes difficulty remembering only verbs.
Nominal aphasia is a type of aphasia, or acquired language impairment, characterized by severe difficulty remembering names or words. The condition is also sometimes called anomic, amnesic, or amnestic aphasia or anomia. It is usually caused by a brain injury, such as a head injury, brain tumor, or stroke. A less severe difficulty remembering names or words is called dysnomia.
This form of aphasia is caused by damage to the parietal lobe or temporal lobe of the brain. The parietal lobe is responsible for integrating sensory information, while the temporal lobe is responsible for processing auditory information, as well as semantics in speech and vision. The damage involves a disruption of neural pathways within the brain.
Patients with nominal aphasia may use circumlocution, an indirect way of speaking, to describe things for which they cannot remember the word. They typically recognize objects and know what they are for or how to use them, even when they can’t remember their name. For example, a nominal aphasic may refer to scissors as “an instrument used to cut paper or hair.”
Those who have this form of aphasia typically understand what words in other people’s speech refer to, even if they can’t remember them themselves. Hesitation when speaking and displays of frustration are also common. The condition is not associated with any loss of intelligence or memory, other than memory for words, and people who have this problem can usually perform non-speech-related activities, such as driving a car, as well as healthy people.
Nominal aphasia sometimes affects only part of a patient’s ability to remember words and names. For example, the patient may have difficulty remembering only the names of objects on the right side of the visual field, but not on the left, or vice versa. Some people have difficulty remembering content words, such as object names, while others have difficulty only with function words such as “in” and “the.” Some patients have more difficulty remembering proper nouns than they do other names, or show equal difficulty remembering both. Some nominal aphasics are able to distinguish colors, but cannot remember their names; this condition is called color anomia.
Another type of nominal aphasia is caused by damage to Broca’s area in the frontal cortex of the brain. Broca’s area is related to speech production, but not speech comprehension. If Broca’s area is damaged, one type of aphasia that can result is called averbia. Averbia is characterized by a difficulty remembering only verbs, but not other types of speech.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
