What is functional language disorder?

As the name suggests, language disorder means that the human body has certain problems in speaking or expressing itself. It is currently a more complex research topic in the medical community. Language disorders can be roughly divided into two types. One is congenital, which is generally caused by family genetic diseases or brain nerves; the other is acquired, when the human brain is exposed to some external stimulation, which can be adjusted and improved through psychological counseling.

The brain is a complex system, or it can be said to be a very sophisticated information processing machine. It processes a large amount of information every day, the most important and largest of which is language information. When there is an obstacle in the brain processing of language information, we will not be able to communicate normally using language and language barriers will occur. Language disorder refers to a language problem in which hearing, intelligence, and interpersonal communication are normal, but the ability to understand, express, and apply language deviates from normal. Common symptoms of language disorders are mainly of the following types.

1. The age of speech development in children with speech delay may vary from person to person. Generally, those who still cannot speak at the age of 2 are classified as having speech delay. Hearing impairment is a common cause, or it may be related to incomplete brain development, mental retardation, brain trauma, etc. In mild cases, the child's ability to express himself/herself is lower than that of children of the same age, or the vocabulary used is not appropriate for his/her age. When the condition is serious, the child cannot speak.

2. Dysphonia is mostly caused by central motor nerve dysfunction or peripheral muscle disease, such as syringomyelia and myasthenia gravis, which cause spasms, paralysis or ataxia of the muscles of speech organs such as the tongue and soft palate. It is characterized by slow, labored, and unclear speech, but there are no defects in sentence structure.

3. Speech difficulties often occur in cerebrovascular accidents, craniocerebral trauma, sequelae of encephalitis, etc., and their clinical characteristics are defects in speech expression ability or receptive ability. The former is manifested as the inability to express one's wishes in words or sentences, while the latter is often manifested as the inability to understand what others say. Patients often suffer from symptoms such as loss of orientation, swallowing difficulties, and incontinence.

4. Aphasia is a speech dysfunction caused by brain lesions. When diseases such as brain abscess, cerebral thrombosis, brain tumor, etc. invade the speech center of the temporal lobe of the brain, it may cause aphasia. Motor aphasia causes expression disorders, inability to say what one wants to say, and expression of one's wishes through gestures, but without difficulty in speaking. Sensory aphasia is a disorder of comprehension, inability to remember words and vocabulary, but normal speaking ability.

5. Difficulty in speech formation: Due to cleft palate, enlarged tongue, short frenulum, poor occlusion, etc., the speech is unclear and the pronunciation is inaccurate. Neurological diseases, hearing impairment, bad vocal habits, etc. can also cause the disease. In mild cases, only some words are not pronounced correctly, such as dental and retroflex consonants, which does not affect the intelligibility of speech. For patients with severe illness, many words are unclear and what they say is difficult to understand.

6. Stuttering is an abnormal speech rhythm, which often occurs during the period of speech development in children. The cause of the disease is unknown, but it may be related to the brain's lack of coordination in controlling the speech organs, incorrect imitation, genetics and other factors. It often manifests as difficulty in pronouncing the first word, interrupted sentences or repeated intonation, resulting in unfluent speech. Those with more serious conditions may frown, have facial muscle twitches, swing their arms, etc. when speaking, and are often nervous when speaking.