Brain Lateralization and Its Role in Language
Brain trauma can be especially destructive to an individual’s cognitive-communication skills. Such problems include disorganized oral and written communication, imprecise language and word-retrieval problems, use of socially inappropriate language, and comprehension difficulties. Furthermore, since conversational communication demands the integration of cognitive, language, and social skills, an individual suffering from a brain injury is especially burdened.
LeBlanc et al. (2014) found that individuals suffering from traumatic brain injury demonstrate two general problems with verbal communication. First, individuals displayed lower initiation and maintenance of conversational topics. Second, they demonstrated difficulty conveying the content of the discussion.
Written communication is also affected by brain injuries, resulting in difficulties participating and achieving success in academic, vocational, and social achievements (Dinnes et al. , 2018). In a study comparing 28 adults suffering from brain injury with 28 adults with learning disabilities, the researchers found no significant difference between the two groups (Dinnes et al. , 2018).
Similar to traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease impairs language functioning. According to Ferris & Farlow (2013), declining language abilities in Alzheimer’s patients have more clinical relevance than many of the other cognitive impairments such as memory loss, orientation and reasoning. Although many impairments affecting Alzheimer’s patients are troubling, language impairment affects other important functioning such as memory, orientation, and reasoning (Ferris & Farlow (2013)).
Alzheimer’s disease causes gradual decline in semantic and pragmatic levels of language processing. Such impairments include difficulties with finding words, understand the meaning of the words, choosing the correct words, avoiding the incorrect words for the topic of conversation, using ambiguous words, inventing words, and loss of fluency. Also, adapting communication appropriate to the social situation is impaired among Alzheimer’s patients, resulting in speaking too much, speaking at an inappropriate time, talking very loudly, repeating ideas, and drifting from the topic of conversation (Ferris & Farlow (2013)).
Language impairments among Alzheimer’s patients develop gradually. In the early stages of the disease, language impairment involves lexical retrieval problems, loss of fluency, and problems with comprehension of both written and spoken language. As the disease progresses, loss of verbal fluency becomes much worse. In the late stages of the disease, speech becomes incoherent, repetitive and simple (Ferris & Farlow (2013)).
As a result of the loss of language skills, Alzheimer’s patients face many indirect problems. For example, as they lose their ability to communicate their needs to their caregivers, many of those needs remain unfulfilled. As an unfortunate result, language impairments oftentimes have a more negative affect on the quality of live for Alzheimer’s patients than does other diseases such as cancer (Ferris & Farlow (2013)). Also, since the caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients are commonly the patients’ family members and loved-ones, perhaps, the most devastating consequent of Alzheimer’s disease is the decline in the quality of their relationships with their loved-ones (Ferris & Farlow (2013)).
In conclusion, whereas traumatic brain injury occurs from sudden, traumatic events such as falls, assaults and automobile accidents, Alzheimer’s disease results from more chronic, degenerative damage. Despite the differences in the causative factors of the two types of brain lateralization, the consequences to the loss of language skills are very similar. Both types of brain injury are very devastating to the patient. Accordingly, more research should be conducted in order to find more effective treatment for such disasters.