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What could cause this?


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Suppose someone speaks English and American Sign Language (a hearing person), and has no problem understanding English, but has trouble with verbal recall and reports frequent "brain fog" and having trouble forming thoughts. However, this person has no problem expressing herself in a spacial-visual language. Where do you think the problem originates?

It's not speech-related, since writing is also affected (basically, anything to do with producing words). Memory tests average. I don't think it's language-related, since she's able to communicate in a spacial-visual language. (I imagine sign language would still involve language processing, but correct me if I'm wrong on that.)

 

I have a friend who's a nurse, and she saw a similar case once. She wrote, "...found that the brain was too active, and essentially her head was "too noisy" for her to think inside it...used some psychotropic drugs that slowed things down a little, and now she's a very quick thinker."

 

I'm trying to understand what's going on here, but I can't find any helpful information. It doesn't seem to be a known condition; I've only heard of the one case until now, and then the second one through my friend recently.

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Hard to tell without imagining and other more focused studies. Have you considered the possibility of an issue with communication across the corpus collosum?



I ask because it's possible information from the right hemisphere is not transferring appropriately to the left. Alternatively, could be something to do with autism spectrum disorder... You'd need to visit a specialist and do some diagnostics to find out with more certainty.

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Hard to tell without imagining and other more focused studies. Have you considered the possibility of an issue with communication across the corpus collosum?

 

I ask because it's possible information from the right hemisphere is not transferring appropriately to the left. Alternatively, could be something to do with autism spectrum disorder... You'd need to visit a specialist and do some diagnostics to find out with more certainty.

 

I don't know much about the brain, so no, I haven't considered anything that specific. She does have a diagnosis of Aspergers. That's something I'm much more familiar with, but I've never heard of anything like this before, so I assumed it wasn't related.

 

Both my friend (the nurse) and I urged for more tests, but so far all the doc sent for was a memory test. It doesn't look like the doc is going to pursue it further unless the client asks for more tests. I'm not sure what other tests to recommend, and frankly I'm hesitant to get involved since I'm not a medical professional of any kind. But at the same time, I can't just accept the way things are without even trying to find a solution.

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Yeah, that's a tough spot to be in and I wish you luck whatever happens. In the meantime, there is some very cool activity happening around tablets and apps. A lot of progress has been seen in the communication space with autistic children and tablets, so potentially it's worth exploring in your situation. Either way, try to maintain a calm and rational and thoughtful approach, as getting anxious and making quick decisions helps nobody (often quite the opposite). :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I would suspect that because this person understands language and can express it with signs better than speech, there is a slight disconnect in the language and motor areas. Specifically, there is a region called Broca's area that is involved in verbal fluency (like recall and production) and it interacts with the motor centers of the tongue and mouth, which may explain why this person struggles with producing words. There are two parts of Broca's area numbered 44 and 45 which do different things. Area 44 is involved in processing of sounds and language production while area 45 is involved in verbal memory.

As for this person's ASL efficiency, I wonder if his hand motor centers are more effective than his mouth and tongue centers in relaying thought. ASL is also considered to be less difficult a language than English because it omits articles, etc. and the sentence structure is less complicated, so maybe he finds cutting out some of these words and structuring them differently to be easier, which would increase verbal recall.

There is also a school in Canada that works with people that have a variety of disorders and it may be of help to you or this person: http://www.arrowsmithschool.org/arrowsmithprogram/index.html.

Edited by OneHalfGiraffe
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