Background: Broca’s APHASIA is a type of APHASIA mostly caused by stroke. One of the most common deficits in this kind of APHASIA is dysprosody which can cause disruption in patients' communications. In this study, we examined dysprosody in patients with Broca’s APHASIA.Methods: 10 patients with Broca’s APHASIA and 10 normal subjects were selected from speech therapy clinics and rehabilitation centers in Isfahan city, Iran. After recording patients’ voices, the data were analyzed using Praat software in laboratory of the University of Isfahan. The spectrum of each word was analyzed accurately; so that the vowel duration, intensity, and fundamental frequency (f0) of each word were extracted. Findings: Duration of /a/ was significantly longer in patients than normal people. Vowels preceding voiced stop consonants were found to be longer compared to those preceding voiceless stop sounds. The patients demonstrated a lower degree of performance in f0, and a higher maximum peak intensity compared to the control group. The effects of age in f0, intensity, and /a/ duration were significant but nonlinear.Conclusion: In this study, we checked the dysprosody in Iranian patients Brocas' a APHASIA using Praat software. The result of our study can cause changes in knowledge about speech pathology and improving speech deficits in these patients.

Introduction: The APHASIA Check List (ACL) is a comprehensive, time-saving tool for language evaluation in APHASIA, including a cognitive assessment part. This cross-sectional study aimed to translate ACL into Persian and analyze the psychometric features of the translated version. The original version of the ACL was translated and adapted from German,its psychometric features were then determined. Methods: Twenty People With APHASIA (PWA) and 50 age-and education-matched, cognitively healthy controls participated in this research. Possible floor and ceiling effects, discriminant validity, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency of the test were analyzed in addition to the evaluation of internal correlations between the test parts (language & cognition). Results: Regarding the performance of PWAs in the language section and the cognitive subtests assessing attention, memory, and reasoning, there were no floor and ceiling effects. Adequate discriminant validities for the language section of the test [i. e., total score: (Mann-Whitney U= 6. 000, P<0. 001),diagnostic subtests scores: (Mann-Whitney U= 3. 000, P<0. 001), and each subtest individually. Besides, the attention subtest of the cognition section (Mann-Whitney U= 16. 500, P<0. 001) was also observed. There was no difference between the control and patient groups in the subtests of memory (Mann-Whitney U= 497. 500, P=0. 973) and reasoning (Mann-Whitney U= 3. 000, P= 308). The test-retest reliability was acceptable in all subtests (ICC agreement= 0. 573-0. 984). The ACL-P suggested appropriate internal consistency (Cronbach’, s alpha coefficient= 0. 761 for test & retest scores). There were also significant correlations between language and cognition in the control and patient groups. Conclusion: The ACL-P test indicated sufficient reliability and validity for the evaluation of Persian-speaking PWAs and is suggested to be used in studies on this population.

Objectives: Despite numerous studies conducted to explore the manifestations of APHASIA in different languages of the world, language-specific patterns of aphasic patients in Kalhori as a southern dialect of Kurdish spoken in part of Kermanshah Province, Iran, remains largely unpacked. The present study aims at investigating language deficits of a forty-year-old Kurdish-Persian aphasic woman, here F. D., who was diagnosed with Broca’s APHASIA.Methods: To assess her linguistic competence, and more particularly, her knowledge of syntax and semantics, we administered a modified version of the Bilingual APHASIA Test in Kalhori.Results: Although she showed severe deficits in almost all modalities and levels examined, results indicated definiteness, prepositions and verb agreement with the subject as the most problematic areas.Discussion: While impairments to do with prepositions and parts of speech are expected features of aphasic patients, as far as the assessment of verbal morphology of Kalhori is concerned, results seem to replicate the results achieved by Nilipour et al. (2001) researching Persian bilingual aphasics.

Background: The Mississippi APHASIA Screening Test (MAST) is a brief screening test for assessing the expressive and receptive language abilities in patients with APHASIA. The objective of the study was to develop and validate the Persian version of the MAST (MASTp) as a screening test for language disorders in patients with post-stroke APHASIA. Methods: This study used a cross-sectional design to cross-culturally adapt the MASTp following the guidelines for the process of cross-cultural adaptation of measures. A total of 40 subjects (20 patients with post-stroke APHASIA and 20 healthy subjects) were included. The MASTp was tested for floor or ceiling effects, internal consistency reliability, intra-rater reliability, discriminative validity, and factor structure. Results: There were no floor or ceiling effects for MASTp total score. The MASTp yielded values for internal consistency reliability that were not adequate (Cronbach’ s alpha 0. 64 and 0. 66 for test and retest, respectively. The intra-rater reliability of the MASTp within a 7 day-interval was excellent for total score (ICC agreement = 0. 96) and both expressive index (ICC = 0. 95) and receptive index (ICC agreement = 0. 98). here were statistically significant differences in MASTp total scores and both indexes between patients and healthy subjects suggesting the discriminative validity of the MASTp (P < 0. 001). Factor analysis revealed a 3-factor solution, which jointly accounted for 72. 06% of the total variance. Additional factor analysis suggested 6-item MASTp as a unidimensional measure. Conclusion: The MASTp is useful as a valid and reliable screening tool for evaluation of language abilities in Persian speaking patients with APHASIA after stroke.

Introduction: APHASIA is a common manifestation of stroke and evaluation of relationships of APHASIA and brain topography could lead to better understanding of cognitive neurophysiology. Methods: 100 stroke patients with APHASIA admitted in Valie-Asr hospital, Khorasan since April 2003 were enrolled in this prospective cross-sectional study. Diagnosis of stroke and APHASIA was made by a neurologist and topography of involved cerebrovascular territories confirmed by topographic maps of brain in CT scan. Results: Global, Broca and Wernicke subtypes of APHASIA constituted 52%, 40% and 6% of the cases, respectively. Based on the usual nourishment of Broca and Wernicke areas by anterior and posterior cortical branches of the middle cerebral artery, 79% of Global, 47% of Broca and 50% of Wernicke APHASIAs had compatible infarct topography. The infarct topography in other cases was not congruent with the involved linguistic areas of their brain. Conclusion: Specific cerebrovascular topography for subtypes of APHASIA in stroke patients was not found. The effects of cerebrovascular lesions on linguistic functions are not predictable by their topography in CT scan.

Background and Aim: Agrammatism is a phenomenon of neuropsychological relevance which has been recently investigated from conceptual and empirical aspects. The present study focuses on grammatical deficit in agrammatic APHASIA. We evaluated the impairment of correct use of tenses of Persian verbs in agrammatic Broca's APHASIA.Methods: Eight patients (mean age 57 years) participated in this descriptive - analytic study. They were classified as agrammatic Broca's APHASIA according to the Persian APHASIA test, their CT Scan and MRI reports and other inclusion criteria. All patients but one was monolingual native speakers of Persian (Farsi). The other individual was bilingual whose dominant language was Persian. All subjects had a left unilateral brain lesion for at least one year after the onset of brain damage. The written sentence completion and picture sentence completion tests were designed and performed.Results: Results do not indicate significant difference between Past Tenses of verb; however, comparison of means showed best scores in Simple Past, Past Continuous, Present Perfect and Past Perfect, respectively. A main result of this study was significant difference between the mean of responses to Past Tense in comparison with Present Tense and Future (p=0.02).Conclusion: Use of tense is impaired in agrammatic Broca's APHASIA in Persian. Our findings point out that use of Past Tense is impaired significantly more than the other tenses of verb.