Final answer:
Individuals with Wernicke’s aphasia, or receptive aphasia, have a damaged Wernicke’s area that leads to difficulty in understanding language, both spoken and written, and producing meaningful speech. They may speak fluently but what they say might be nonsensical or unrelated to the conversation. Unlike Broca’s aphasia, which affects speech production, Wernicke's aphasia primarily affects language comprehension.
Step-by-step explanation:
If an individual has Wernicke’s aphasia, they experience a loss of the ability to understand received language, known as receptive aphasia. This condition affects the Wernicke’s area, which is located adjacent to the auditory association cortex and is associated with the processing of language. People with Wernicke's aphasia can produce speech, but what they say may lack meaning and they have difficulty understanding both spoken and written language.
Wernicke's aphasia arises from damage to multimodal integrative areas in the left hemisphere responsible for language functions. This damage impairs the connections between language comprehension and speech production, leading to the common symptoms of this aphasia. Despite their language production often being fluent, the content can be nonsensical, and statements and responses may seem unrelated to questions posed to them.
This type of aphasia is different from Broca’s aphasia, which is an expressive aphasia, where speech production is compromised. In contrast, Wernicke's aphasia involves the understanding of language, while speech remains largely unaffected. Victims may speak in long sentences that lack meaning, add unnecessary words, and create new, made-up words.