Dynamic aphasia

Dynamic aphasia
SpecialtyNeurology, Psychiatry

Dynamic aphasia is a type of aphasia characterized by difficulty or inability to produce spontaneous speech. Despite this, patients usually retain the ability to name objects, understand speech, and form sentences with proper grammar. It is considered a type of transcortical motor aphasia.

Signs and symptoms

Spontaneous production of propositional speech in dynamic aphasia is seriously impaired. Patients will not usually spontaneously initiate conversation. However, they will initiate other activities, which distinguishes dynamic aphasia from apathy. They are also able to answer questions with constrained answers and participate in conversation with substantial external support.

Diagnosis of dynamic aphasia is based on cognitive testing such as the Hayling Sentence Completion Test. Word retrieval, spelling, grammar, word repetition, and comprehension of language are typically preserved.

Causes

Damage to the left frontal lobe is typically implicated in dynamic aphasia. In addition, there may be a subset of more severely impaired dynamic aphasia patients with bilateral frontal lobe damage coupled with extreme difficulty in producing novel thoughts.

The frontal lobe damage that causes dynamic aphasia is most commonly due to a stroke, but can also be due to progressive supranuclear palsy or frontotemporal dementia. The progranulin gene is implicated in frontotemporal dementia with dynamic aphasia.

Rarely, cases may involve damage to the thalamus rather than the frontal lobe.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Caine, Diana; Nihat, Akin; Crabb, Philippa; Rudge, Peter; Cipolotti, Lisa; Collinge, John; Mead, Simon (2018). "The language disorder of prion disease is characteristic of a dynamic aphasia and is rarely an isolated clinical feature". PLOS ONE. 13 (1) e0190818. Bibcode:2018PLoSO..1390818C. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0190818. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5755885. PMID 29304167.
  2. 1 2 3 Robinson, G; Shallice, T; Cipolotti, L (2006). "Dynamic aphasia in progressive supranuclear palsy: A deficit in generating a fluent sequence of novel thought". Neuropsychologia. 44 (8): 1344–1360. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.01.002. PMID 16504225. Retrieved 2026-06-23.
  3. 1 2 Robinson, Gail A.; Spooner, Donna; Harrison, William J. (2015). "Frontal dynamic aphasia in progressive supranuclear palsy: Distinguishing between generation and fluent sequencing of novel thoughts". Neuropsychologia. 77: 62–75. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.08.001. ISSN 1873-3514. PMID 26247320.
  4. 1 2 Milano, Nicholas J.; Heilman, Kenneth M. (2015-06-25). "Primary Progressive Speech Abulia". Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. 46 (3): 737–745. doi:10.3233/JAD-142112. PMID 25854928. Retrieved 2026-06-23.
  5. ↑ Perez, David L.; Dickerson, Bradford C.; McGinnis, Scott M.; Sapolsky, Daisy; Johnson, Keith; Searl, Meghan; Daffner, Kirk R. (2013). "You don't say: dynamic aphasia, another variant of primary progressive aphasia?". Journal of Alzheimer's Disease: JAD. 34 (1): 139–144. doi:10.3233/JAD-121861. ISSN 1875-8908. PMC 3621037. PMID 23168447.
  6. ↑ Beck, Jonathan; Rohrer, Jonathan D.; Campbell, Tracy; Isaacs, Adrian; Morrison, Karen E.; Goodall, Emily F.; Warrington, Elizabeth K.; Stevens, John; Revesz, Tamas; Holton, Janice; Al-Sarraj, Safa; King, Andrew; Scahill, Rachael; Warren, Jason D.; Fox, Nick C.; Rossor, Martin N.; Collinge, John; Mead, Simon (2008). "A distinct clinical, neuropsychological and radiological phenotype is associated with progranulin gene mutations in a large UK series". Brain: A Journal of Neurology. 131 (Pt 3): 706–720. doi:10.1093/brain/awm320. ISSN 1460-2156. PMC 2577762. PMID 18234697.
  7. ↑ Rohrer, Jonathan D.; Warren, Jason D.; Omar, Rohani; Mead, Simon; Beck, Jonathan; Revesz, Tamas; Holton, Janice; Stevens, John M.; Al-Sarraj, Safa; Pickering-Brown, Stuart M.; Hardy, John; Fox, Nick C.; Collinge, John; Warrington, Elizabeth K.; Rossor, Martin N. (2008). "Parietal lobe deficits in frontotemporal lobar degeneration caused by a mutation in the progranulin gene". Archives of Neurology. 65 (4): 506–513. doi:10.1001/archneur.65.4.506. ISSN 1538-3687. PMC 2578869. PMID 18413474.
  8. ↑ Cox, David E.; Heilman, Kenneth M. (2011). "Dynamic-intentional thalamic aphasia: a failure of lexical-semantic self-activation". Neurocase. 17 (4): 313–317. doi:10.1080/13554794.2010.504731. ISSN 1465-3656. PMID 20818542.