Nominal aphasia
From Psychology Wiki
Community portal · Tasks to do · News · Help
Clinical · Educational · Ind&Org · Other fields · Professional · Transpersonal · World
Assessment | Biopsychology | Comparative | Cognitive | Developmental | Language | Personality | Philosophy | Research Methods | Social | Statistics
Clinical: Approaches · Group therapy · Techniques · Types of problem · Areas of specialism · Taxonomies · Therapeutic issues · Modes of delivery · Model translation project · Personal experiences ·
Nominal aphasia (also known as anomia, anomic aphasia or amnesic aphasia) is a form of aphasia (loss of language capability caused by brain damage) in which the subject has difficulty remembering or recognizing names which the subject should know well. The subject speaks fluently, grammatically, has normal comprehension, and the only deficit is trouble with "word finding," that is, finding appropriate words for what they mean to say.
Subjects often use circumlocutions (speaking in a roundabout way) in order to express a certain word for which they cannot remember the name. Sometimes the subject can recall the name when given clues. Sufferers are often frustrated when they know they know the name, but cannot produce it.
"Hold on, I should know the name of that thing... Give me a minute ..."
Sometimes subjects may know what to do with an object, but still not be able to give a name to the object. For example, show a subject an orange, and ask what it's called. The same subject may be well aware that the object can be peeled and eaten, and may be able to demonstrate this by actions or even verbal responses. Whether such a subject could name the color of the orange is unknown. So it is clear that lexical selection is impaired
Contents |
[edit] Neurological causes
Anomia is caused by damage to various parts of the parietal lobe or the temporal lobe, of the brain. In particular lesions to the angular gyrus have been implicated.
This type of phenomenon can be quite complex, and usually involves a breakdown in one or more pathways between regions in the brain. The responses may also differ depending on whether objects are shown in the right or left hand side of the visual field.
Averbia is a specific type of anomia in which the subject has trouble remembering only verbs. This is caused by damage to the frontal cortex, in or near Broca's area.
Another type of anomia is color anomia, where the patient can distinguish between colors but cannot identify them by name. [1]
[edit] See also
[edit] References & Bibliography
[edit] Key texts
[edit] Books
[edit] Papers
[edit] Additional material
[edit] Books
[edit] Papers
[edit] External links
 This psychology-related article is a stub. You can help the Psychology Wiki by expanding it. |
| This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Nominal aphasia. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
- gl:anomia
