Speech difficulties - Causes and Symptoms

Definition

The language difficulty is a symptom of a disorder that prevents the words from being expressed and / or understood. This event can be temporary or permanent and can affect adults or children.

The language difficulty may derive from morphological or neuro-muscular alterations of one or more structures involved in phonation (eg vocal dysfunction secondary to tongue or larynx affections). In other cases, it corresponds to problems concerning the composition of the message (eg difficulties in choosing words and meanings for the presence of brain damage).

Language problems can be sudden or occur gradually, in a congenital or acquired form.

Sudden onset language difficulty may indicate cerebral infarction, hemorrhage, head injury or an ischemic transient attack (TIA); these events represent neurological emergencies and are often associated with symptoms such as loss of consciousness, hemiparesis, hemianopsia and paresthesia. Stroke can produce a loss of understanding (if the Wernicke area is affected) and / or an inability to express the language of the language (when Broca's area is involved).

The difficulty of gradual onset language, on the other hand, can result in neuro-degenerative processes (cerebral atrophies). The presence of an expansive brain tumor or an infectious process (eg encephalitis) can also cause this symptom. Senile dementia and Alzheimer's disease can manifest themselves with difficulty finding words and pronouncing them correctly. Parkinson's disease, on the other hand, is characterized by monotonous speech (the voice has no change in tone or rhythm).

The language difficulty may also depend on pathologies that cause muscle and motor degeneration, such as multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and myasthenia gravis.

Furthermore, this symptom can occur in the case of neurological disorders of the voice (spasmodic dysphonia), oral cancer and the presence of laryngeal nodules or papillomatosis.