Broca's Aphasia

Broca's aphasia is a disordered way of speaking that can occur after brain damage to the Broca's Area which is located in the front left side of the brain. Usually occurring after a stroke Broca's aphasia is characterized by being unable to form complete sentences and difficulty understanding sentences. Patients suffering from this type of aphasia (disruption in speech production, comprehension, and/or understanding) essentially speak in nouns and leave out words that form complete sentences like 'the', 'and', and 'is'.

An example of this would be a patient saying "Bike...blue" instead of "The bike is blue". Sufferers can also have difficulty understanding and following directional words like up, down, after, left, and right. People with Broca's aphasia have difficulty repeating sentences and this is typically how this condition is diagnosed. It was first identified in the 1860s by Paul Broca, a physician who had a patient who could only say the word tan repeatedly (tan, tan, tan, tan).