TRAUMATIC APHASIA
This book is one of the basic books on neuropsychological analysis of disturbance of speech, resulting from local injuries of the brain by missile wounds. The book was first published in Russian as a result of intensive work during the Second World War by Professor A. R. Luria, who was head of a neurosurgical rehabilitative hospital for those with brain injuries. A neuropsychological and psychophysiological approach to the local brain injuries was a basis for an analysis of the most important disorders of language and a starting point to the general theory of higher cortical functions of man which was developed by the author and published in his other books: Higher Cortical Functions in Man (New York, Basic Books, 1966) and Human Brain and Psychological Processes (New York, Harper & Row, 1966).
The author's approach to Aphasia is an attempt to single out basic neuropsychological factors underlying speech. He describes injuries of the left temporal lobe dealing with the analysis and synthesis of phonemes and resulting in sensory (acoustic) Aphasia; injuries of post-central and premotor zones of the left hemisphere, leading to disturbances of the afferent (kynesthetic) and efferent (kinetic) organization of speech; injuries of the left parietooccipital lobe, resulting in disturbances of the simultaneous, spatial schemes and leading to the semantic disturbances of logic-grammatical structures. He describes a special methodology for studying Aphasia and basic methods of rehabilitation of speech in patients with local brain injuries.
The book can be used as a source of information for linguists, neurologists, psychiatrists and psychologists interested in a scientific approach to the disturbances of language and speech and for a better understanding of the structure of language.
