According to Agence France-Presse, on March 30, local time, the family of Hollywood film star Bruce Willis posted on social media, revealing that the 67-year-old Willis suffered from aphasia and stopped acting. This has sparked more attention to this incomprehensible communication barrier.
What is aphasia?
Hugo Botha, a neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic in the United States, explains: "Aphasia means that patients just have problems with their language, they are not born with problems. The most common cause is a stroke or head injury. ”
Experts emphasize that while the disease affects a patient's understanding of language and written words, it usually does not affect intelligence.
According to a survey by the National Aphasia Association, less than 9 percent of people know what aphasia is. In other words, the vast majority of people do not know what aphasia is.
Brenda Rapp, a cognitive scientist at Johns Hopkins University, explains: "While it is usually triggered by specific one-time events such as stroke, there are other possibilities, such as from neurodegenerative diseases. In this case, the injury is progressive and the treatment focuses on preventing further loss of function. ”
Willis's family did not share the reason for his diagnosis in its statement.
What are the different forms of aphasia?
The brain system that manages language is a very complex machine, Rapp says, involving choosing the right words and using their mouths to make sounds, as well as transmitting sounds back to the brain to decode their meaning after hearing them.
Everyone occasionally experiences forgetting a word, or saying something to the lips but not remembering the word.
She added: "You can imagine that in people with aphasia, this happens a lot. "
Doctors sometimes divide aphasia into broad clinical categories that are associated with the site where brain damage occurs.
Brooke Hatfield, a speech pathologist at the American Chinese Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA), says that in expressive aphasia, people often understand language well but have difficulty speaking.
People with this type of aphasia may use simple sentences such as "I want to eat."
In people with acceptive aphasia, words are easy to say, but they can be inappropriate, and they themselves have a hard time understanding what they hear.
Speech therapy
The good news, Hatfield says, is that everyone has a chance to get better in the long run. Some people have had a stroke 30 years ago, they are still struggling with language rehabilitation and communication, and progress has been made.
Rapp says the brain is extremely malleable, and speech therapy allows other parts of it to "bypass" the barriers in the damaged area and make new connections.
Such treatment could also train people to talk around a topic while stuck on a particular word.
Family members can also develop strategies to make themselves better understood, such as shortening the sentences to be expressed, making sure you are communicating with each other face-to-face and not in another room, and minimizing background noise.
For now, Rapp said, experimental therapies that combine electrical stimulation of the brain and speech therapy have shown promise for restoring function.