Vascular Aphasia Syndromes

The most common classification of aphasic individuals in the literature is by clinical syndromes of commonly co-occurring deficits that reflect vascular territories affected by stroke. This classification system is approximately based on the lesion-deficit association logic of the 19th century. The relationship between these syndromes and the associated vascular territories is not always consistent, in part because of individual variability in vasculature and in part because of reorganization of structure-function relationship after injury. Characteristics of vascular syndromes of aphasia are dissociable, because the entire vascular territory is not always damaged and because various symptoms recover at different rates. In this chapter, the vascular syndromes of aphasia are described. The relevance of the vascular syndromes to current concepts of the functional neuroanatomy of language is discussed. The usefulness of vascular syndromes in medical management of stroke versus aphasia research and treatment is considered.