Aphasia in the Bengali Language: Excerpts from the Kolkata Aphasia Study

EasyChair Preprint 6651

Abstract

Introduction: The knowledge of aphasia incidence and profile in different languages is important towards understanding the cross-linguistic diversity in brain representation of language. Here we attempt to elaborate various aspects of aphasia in speakers of Bengali. language. Methods: Between 2016 and 2018, cases of aphasia following first-ever stroke were collected from a tertiary care stroke unit. Bengali version of Western Aphasia Battery was used for language assessment.  Among 515 screened cases of first-ever acute stroke, 208 presented with aphasia. Language assessment was done between 7 and 14 days in all study participants and was repeated between 90 and 100 days. Results: The incidence of post-stroke aphasia in our sample was 40.39% with Broca’s aphasia being the commonest type. Majority of the participants showed very severe aphasia while the independent determinants of severity were hemorrhagic stroke, higher lesion volume and non-fluent aphasia. Bilingualism was observed as a protecting factor as monolingual participants showed higher initial severity of post-stroke aphasia. The most important determinant of aphasia recovery was initial aphasia severity. Lesion-aphasia discordance was observed in 14.92% of participants and discordance favored non-fluent aphasia type. Crossed aphasia incidence was found higher (6.73%) in Bengali-speakers. Conclusion: An attempt was made to elaborate aphasia in the Bengali language in its totality (including uncrossed & crossed aphasias and lesion-aphasia discordance) which might help future studies to explore its representation in healthy brain.

Lahiri D, Dubey S, Ardila A, et al. (2019).Incidence and types of aphasia after first-ever acute stroke in Bengali speakers: age, gender, and educational effect on the type of aphasia. Aphasiology.June 2019:1–14.doi:10.1080/02687038.2019.1630597

Keyphrases: Bengali, Crossed, Severity, Stroke, aphasia, discordance

@booklet{EasyChair:6651,
  author    = {Durjoy Lahiri and Souvik Dubey and Alfredo Ardila and Biman Kanti Ray},
  title     = {Aphasia in the Bengali Language: Excerpts from the Kolkata Aphasia Study},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6651},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}