Understanding Aphasia: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatments
Neurological DisordersStroke

What Is Aphasia?

What Is Aphasia?
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Updated on February 23, 2026
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Aphasia is a language disorder that affects your ability to communicate. It can impact your speech and writing, and cause difficulty understanding written and spoken language.

Aphasia typically occurs suddenly after a stroke or traumatic brain injury. But it can also be caused by a slow-growing tumor or progressive neurological disease, such as dementia.

Treatment for aphasia involves treating the underlying condition as well as undergoing speech-language therapy to relearn how to communicate. The outlook for people with aphasia depends on the severity of the condition.

Types of Aphasia

Aphasia can affect your language abilities in different ways, depending on the location of the brain injury. These language patterns are grouped into types named for the area of the brain affected and highlight specific strengths and challenges:

  • Global aphasia is the most severe form of aphasia, resulting from extensive damage to the language areas of the brain. A person with global aphasia has difficulty with all parts of communication, including reading, writing, talking, and understanding.
  • Broca’s aphasia is a type of nonfluent aphasia in which a person has difficulty with speech, such as using short sentences, leaving out small words, and talking slowly. Someone with Broca’s aphasia can usually understand what others are saying.
  • Wernicke’s aphasia is a type of fluent aphasia that causes difficulty understanding what others are saying. A person with Wernicke’s aphasia may speak in long, unbroken sentences, but they may not make sense and include the wrong words.
  • Transcortical aphasia is when a person has trouble speaking (motor) or comprehending (sensory), but they can still repeat what they hear.
  • Conduction aphasia causes difficulty repeating words or sentences, though a person may still be able to understand speech and speak clearly.
  • Anomic aphasia is when a person still has comprehension and fluency, but has difficulty retrieving words.

Symptoms of Aphasia

Aphasia is a sign of an underlying medical condition, such as a stroke or brain tumor.

Someone with aphasia may:

  • Speak in short or incomplete sentences
  • Speak in sentences that don’t make sense
  • Use unrecognizable words
  • Substitute one word or sound for another
  • Not understand what others are saying
  • Not understand what they read
  • Write words or sentences that don’t make sense
  • Have trouble recalling words
Although aphasia affects your ability to communicate, it doesn’t affect your intelligence.

Causes of Aphasia

Aphasia is caused by damage to areas of your brain involved in language. The most common causes of aphasia include:

  • Stroke
  • Traumatic brain injury
  • Brain tumor
  • Brain infection
  • Brain inflammation
  • Progressive neurological conditions, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

Conditions that disrupt brain function can also cause aphasia, which may be temporary. These include:

How Is Aphasia Diagnosed?

A doctor may recognize aphasia during an examination for another condition, such as a brain injury or stroke.

To diagnose aphasia, they will perform a physical exam and ask questions about your symptoms and health history. It may be helpful to bring someone with you who can help answer questions if you have difficulty understanding what your doctor is asking.

If your doctor suspects aphasia, they may refer you to a speech-language pathologist for a more comprehensive assessment of your language ability. A speech-language pathologist will evaluate your ability to:

  • Speak
  • Understand
  • Read
  • Write
  • Repeat words, phrases, and sentences

Your doctor may also recommend imaging tests, such as a computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging scan, to rule out other conditions.

Treatment for Aphasia

The first step in aphasia treatment is treating the underlying cause, such as restoring blood flow after a stroke. This can help limit or prevent further damage and help manage aphasia symptoms.

Most people need therapy to recover their language abilities, and few will fully regain their preinjury communication skills. If damage to the brain is mild, a person may recover from aphasia without treatment.

Speech-Language Therapy

The goal of speech-language therapy for people with aphasia is to restore as much language as possible. It involves learning to compensate for lost language skills and finding other ways to communicate, such as with gestures, pictures, and electronic devices.

Therapy often takes place in groups where people with aphasia can practice their communication skills in a safe environment. Loved ones are also encouraged to take part in communication training to help with recovery. The National Aphasia Association recommends the following tips when communicating with someone with aphasia:

  • Be patient and encouraging.
  • Speak slowly and clearly.
  • Give the person time to respond.
  • Use short sentences.
  • Ask yes/no questions, when possible.
  • Use pictures, writing, or gestures.

Medications

Researchers are currently exploring medications for the treatment of aphasia. These include drugs that improve blood flow to the brain and drugs that enhance the brain’s ability to form new connections by altering the availability of neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine.

While some of these drugs have shown promise in smaller studies, more research is needed to understand their effectiveness.

Complications of Aphasia

Because aphasia affects your ability to communicate, it can significantly impact your quality of life. Difficulty with communication can interfere with your job, relationships, and day-to-day functioning. This can lead to:

  • Embarrassment
  • Frustration
  • Anger
  • Depression
  • Isolation

Outlook for Aphasia

The outlook for someone with aphasia depends on the cause and severity of the brain damage.

In some cases, such as with a migraine attack or concussion, aphasia may be temporary and resolve over time. But if there is permanent damage to language centers of the brain, aphasia may be a lifelong condition.

Speech-language therapy can’t fully reverse the effects of aphasia, but it may significantly improve symptoms over time. Most improvement occurs within the first two to three months and peaks around six months after onset.

The Takeaway

  • Aphasia is a language disorder that affects your ability to communicate. It is caused by damage to areas of the brain involved in language, commonly resulting from a stroke or other traumatic brain injury.
  • Depending on the cause, a person with aphasia may have difficulty speaking, reading, writing, and understanding others. Some causes may be temporary, such as a migraine attack or concussion, while more permanent damage may result in a lifelong condition.
  • Treatment for aphasia involves treating the underlying cause, along with speech-language therapy to improve communication. Although full recovery is rare, many people will show improvement over time.
  • Aphasia can have a significant impact on day-to-day functioning. However, taking part in group therapy and seeking support from loved ones can help improve quality of life

Resources We Trust

EDITORIAL SOURCES
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy. We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.
Resources
  1. Aphasia: Symptoms and Causes. Mayo Clinic. June 11, 2022.
  2. What Is Aphasia? National Aphasia Association.
  3. Glossary of Aphasia Terms. National Aphasia Association.
  4. Aphasia. Cleveland Clinic. October 7, 2024.
  5. Aphasia: Diagnosis and Treatment. Mayo Clinic. June 11, 2022.
  6. Aphasia FAQ. National Aphasia Association.
  7. Fridriksson J et al. Current Approaches to the Treatment of Post-Stroke Aphasia. Journal of Stroke. May 31, 2021.
  8. Le H et al. Aphasia. StatPearls. October 29, 2024.
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Jessica Baity, MD

Medical Reviewer
Castle Connolly Top Doctor

Jessica Baity, MD, is a board-certified neurologist practicing in southern Louisiana. She cares for a variety of patients in all fields of neurology, including epilepsy, headache, dementia, movement disorders, multiple sclerosis, and stroke.

She received a bachelor's degree in international studies and history from the University of Miami and a master's in international relations from American University. She graduated from the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, where she also did her internship in internal medicine and her residency in neurology.

Prior to practicing medicine, she worked in international relations and owned a foreign language instruction and translation company. 

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Ashley Welch has more than a decade of experience in both breaking news and long-form storytelling. She is passionate about getting to the crux of the latest scientific studies and sharing important information in an easy-to-digest way to better inform decision-making. She has written about health, science, and wellness for a variety of outlets, including Scientific American Mind, Healthline, New York Family, Oprah.com, and WebMD.

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