Subcortical Aphasia

I've just assessed a patient who presented with subcortical aphasia.

Neurology

• Subcortical structures are involved in a cortical-subcortical loop and are involved in monitoring and selecting lexical input.
• The loop triggers the release of language segments after semantic monitoring (regulatory function).
• Damage to subcortical structures (in this case the left Thalamus, Internal capsule and Insula) may lead to declarative memory difficulties (facts/names/events..) and associated naming difficulties (lexical semantic access).
• Typically grammar, comprehension and articulation are relatively intact.
• Primarily this form of aphasia presents as a naming difficulty with some auditory comprehension impairments which could be due to verbal memory/attention deficits rather than a true language deficit.

Heres a language sample from the cookie theft picture description task:

'washing up going on, cookie jar, accident going on water spilling, water going, cookie jar, falling off the stool'