Giffords Recovering Speech Abilities
Friday's update on the clinical status and recovery of Gabrielle Giffords from the NYT.
Most notable:
- Giffords has recovered sufficient right body strength to "walk with assistance."
- Her vision does not appear to be impaired (suggesting that she doesn't have visual field deficits due to an occipital lobe injury).
- Her personality is re-emerging and appears to be preserved.
- Except for memory of the event, her memory—both antegrade and retrograde—appears to be preserved.
- Her speech is recovering.
Giffords is reportedly repeating words with ease and "is starting to string words together." Although categories of aphasia can be arbitrary and somewhat artificial, the described deficits suggest a transcortical motor aphasia due to some disruption between the supplementary motor area (located in the superior frontal lobe) and the frontal perisylvian speech zone (generally described as being an anterior extension of Broca's area).* This aphasia is frequently associated with right hemiparesis.
The speech deficit is consistent with descriptions of Giffords's brain injury (see here and here) due to a gunshot wound in January.
* Although Giffords's ability to name objects (which can be limited in transcortical motor aphasia) was not described.
