Jargon aphasia is a type of fluent

aphasia Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in t ...

in which an individual's speech is incomprehensible, but appears to make sense to the individual. Persons experiencing this condition will either replace a desired word with another that sounds or looks like the original one, or has some other connection to it, or they will replace it with random

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' b ...

s. Accordingly, persons with jargon aphasia often use

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

s, and may perseveration, perseverate if they try to replace the words they can not find with sounds.

Causes

People affected by jargon aphasia usually are elderly and/or people who have damage to the neural pathways of certain parts of the brain. This is usually the result of the following conditions: * Stroke *

Traumatic brain injury A traumatic brain injury (TBI), also known as an intracranial injury, is an injury to the brain caused by an external force. TBI can be classified based on severity (ranging from mild traumatic brain injury TBI/concussionto severe traumatic br ...

Epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrica ...

* Migraine *

Brain tumor A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seconda ...

* Alzheimer's disease *

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

Since jargon is associated with fluent (Wernicke's) aphasia, it is usually caused by damage to the temporal lobe, and more specifically,

Wernicke's area Wernicke's area (; ), also called Wernicke's speech area, is one of the two parts of the cerebral cortex that are linked to speech, the other being Broca's area. It is involved in the comprehension of written and spoken language, in contrast to B ...

. After the condition is diagnosed, a CT or

MRI Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio waves ...

scan is typically used to determine the location and severity of the brain damage that has caused the aphasia. There have been cases in which aphasia has developed after damage to only the right hemisphere of the brain. These cases are few and far between, and usually involve unique circumstances for the individual. Most commonly, these results can stem from brain organization that is different than the general population, or a heavier than normal reliance on the right hemisphere of the brain.

Diagnosis

Someone with jargon aphasia may exhibit the following behaviors: * intermixing real words and nonsensical words while speaking or writing * failing to recognize mistakes being made while speaking or writing * using real words in incorrect situations * frequent, repetitive uttering of low-frequency words * the inability to say or write a specific word or phrase Some of the specific types of language errors that occur are: ; lexical (real word) :; semantic :: Real word that was semantically related to target. ("dog" instead of "cat") :; formal :: Real word that shared either the initial phoneme or at least 50% of phonemes with target. ("dog" instead of "desk" or "dog" instead of "frog") :; mixed :: Real word that was both semantically and phonologically related to target. ("bicycle" instead of "motorcycle") :; visual :: Real word of an item similar in visual form to the target. ("ball" instead of "orange") :; unrelated :: Real word that was not related to the target in any obvious way. ("dog" instead of "apple") ; non-lexical (nonword) :; phonological :: Nonword that shared either the initial phoneme or at least 50% of phonemes with target. ("deg" instead of "dog") :; neologistic :: Nonword not reaching the criterion for phonological relatedness (i.e., sharing less than 50% of phonemes with the target and with a different initial phoneme). Nonwords that are pseudo-compound words. ("kib" instead of "dog") ; other errors :; Don't know :: Indication that response was unknown or item was not responded to at all. ("I don’t know" or silence) :; description :: Attempts to describe as opposed to name item. (Multiple word responses) Jargon aphasia must be diagnosed through a series of tests. Since the number of individuals that have aphasia after suffering a stroke is high, a test is usually carried out soon after the stroke occurs. There is a list of basic exercises to help assess a person's language skills, such as: * naming objects that begin with a certain letter * reading or writing * holding a conversation * understanding directions and commands There is also a common test used, called the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination test, which incorporates exercises that extensively review the person's language skills.

Treatments

The only way to treat aphasia is with a speech-language pathologist (SLP). It will not completely restore the person's prior level of communication, but SLP can lead to a massive improvement of jargon aphasia. Recipients of this treatment typically achieve better use of residual language abilities, improved language skills, and the ability to communicate in a different way by making up for missing words in their speech. One specific method that has shown to lead to improvements with certain symptoms is phonological component analysis, or PCA for short. Participants in PCA therapy tend to improve in the ability to name specific items that they are test on, as well as the decrease in use of nonwords to describe said items. Seeing promising results from this type of therapy has led to much optimism in hopes of developing more treatment methods for jargon aphasia.

History

Hughlings Jackson John Hughlings Jackson, FRS (4 April 1835 – 7 October 1911) was an English neurologist. He is best known for his research on epilepsy. Biography He was born at Providence Green, Green Hammerton, near Harrogate, Yorkshire, the youngest so ...

is believed to have been the person who initially contributed the term "jargon" to aphasiology. He used this term not to distinguish a separate type of aphasia, but to describe the language output of certain people that was meaningless and incomprehensible to the listener, although it appeared to have some meaning for the speaker.

Other meanings and types

There are many different meanings when people refer to jargon aphasia. Since Hughling Jackson's time, it has covered a broad range of similar verbal behaviors and has been used to describe a multitude of different aphiastic disturbances. Some of the behaviors are described as the person having speaking in a "confused, unintelligible language", "a strange, outlandish, or barbarous dialect", "a hybrid language", and can be referred to as a pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words. Observation of these behaviors has led to a branching of different types of jargon. * ''Neologistic jargon'' is the production of language containing non-existent words that are not related to what the person is attempting to convey. * ''Phonemic jargon'' is the production of language containing inappropriate words that are phonemically related to what the person is attempting to convey. * ''Semantic jargon'' is the production of language which is devoid of content and consists of real words that are inappropriate given the context of the situation. All of these types of jargon are seen in fluent aphasia, which can more commonly be addressed as

Wernicke's aphasia Wernicke's aphasia, also known as receptive aphasia, sensory aphasia or posterior aphasia, is a type of aphasia in which individuals have difficulty understanding written and spoken language. Patients with Wernicke's aphasia demonstrate fluent ...

Contradictions and different viewpoints

; Weinstein : Weinstein's viewpoint of jargon illustrates just the basic rambling and incoherent but structurally intact speech. It does not include details about neologisms and

paraphasia Paraphasia is a type of language output error commonly associated with aphasia, and characterized by the production of unintended syllables, words, or phrases during the effort to speak. Paraphasic errors are most common in patients with fluent for ...

s. He and his coworkers view jargon as a positive symptom of aphasia, and as an adaptive behavior and form of denial, or anosognosia, in the presence of language deficit. ; Schuell : Shuell views jargon as the result of severe impairment in the recall of learned auditory patterns and imperfect auditory feedback processes. The lack of control of verbal output is related to reduced auditory input. ; Cohn and Neumann : Their viewpoint is that jargon results from the disruption of the sequential ordering of speech. ; Alajouanine : Alajouanine's viewpoint highlights that the reason for jargon cannot be found in the breakdown of the intrinsic speech structure itself. He stressed that incomprehensibility and lack of meaning, rather than articulatory abnormality or lack of proper grammatical sequencing were the essence of jargon. He often spoke of a "suppression of the semantic values of language" in jargon.