What is aphasia, which Bruce Willis suffers from?


The 67-year-old actor’s family announced on Wednesday that he is ending his career due to aphasia, a syndrome caused by brain damage that causes partial or complete loss of the ability to express oneself or to understand the language.

The news fell Wednesday evening around 6 p.m. American actor Bruce Willis, world famous for his roles in pulp Fiction Where The fifth Elementis forced to put an end to his career at the age of 67 for health reasons. “Our dear Bruce has had some health issues. He was recently diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities.”wrote his family on Instagram, to explain the end of the actor’s career. Release summarizes everything you need to know about aphasia, this illness that affects Bruce Willis.

Concretely, aphasia is a partial or complete loss of the ability to express oneself or understand written and spoken language. It is the result of brain damage. Its causes are many. Cognitive disorders can appear after a stroke, which is the first cause of aphasia. But aphasia can also be caused by a “simple” head trauma, meningitis or appear in the context of degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

The person affected by the syndrome does not present any anomaly of the organs of speech such as the tongue or the larynx, of sight or of hearing. Aphasia is not the consequence of deafness or a disorder of the organs of speech. “It’s a condition, a syndrome more than a disease that leads to difficulties in understanding or expression. What matters is to find the cause to understand what aphasia we are dealing with.summarizes the neurologist Valérie Mesnage with Release.

Different types of aphasia

There are several types of aphasia. “They are defined by the location of the brain injury. There is a functional organization within the brain that has two major centers: one that deals with the understanding of language and the other with its expression., explains Valérie Mesnage. Concerning expression, we thus find Broca’s aphasia for which the patient can experience articulation problems to varying degrees with a choppy rhythm or a slowed flow, difficulties in finding the words to express themselves or to formulate their ideas.

Wernicke’s aphasia leads to significant disorders of oral or written comprehension. A patient may therefore no longer understand the meaning of the words of a language he speaks. This type of syndrome also results in the use of inappropriate words. In this case, the patient can either replace a letter or a syllable in a word or simply replace one word with another or even invent one. The patient is not aware of his aphasia. He therefore does not realize the difficulties of understanding between him and those around him.

Finally, note that the evolutionary character or not of an aphasia depends on the causes that led to the syndrome. If it is the consequence of a head trauma, it is very likely to be self-limiting, that is to say to be limited over time or even to disappear once the brain lesion has been treated. Ditto when the stroke that may have caused aphasia is sufficiently treated. Conversely, in the context of a degenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s, aphasia can worsen.

To cure aphasia, it is therefore necessary to treat its cause. Speech therapy can obviously also be a good way to allow patients to gradually regain their cognitive abilities. “In the case of aphasia, it is strongly recommended”, assures Valérie Mesnage, while specifying that “it is difficult to assess the effects”.



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