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Friday, May 20, 2011

Aphasia:


So we have been studying different problems that occur due to strokes. One of them that I have been assigned to is Broca’s Aphasia. This is a very interesting problem that occurs due to Broca’s area being damaged. Broca’s area is the part of the brain that affects language, Wernicke’s area also affects language.

There are many different things that can happen with this area being damaged and there are many youtube videos that show these problems. One video that I find quite amazing was one on a guy that learned to talk again after a stroke using Melodic Intonation Theory. Click here to see it.

So how do we incorporate this into characterization? To me I think that we can use different weaknesses that occur due to brain damage to make our characters more real. We can write in a speech problem for our mc that he must struggle with. I think we have to be careful though not to make it too cumbersome for the story.

What are your thoughts on giving our MC weaknesses? How much is too much and how much is too little?

7 comments:

  1. i think that jodi picoult does a masterful job of weaving weakness in her characters and would be well worth studying...i have read all her books...she has several where one of the characters has autism or another debilitating disease...anyway that is my 2 cents for the night...

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  2. This one (it's mine, and I'm sorry to "spam" it - I don't usually do this, promise, but it seemed to fit) includes dyslexia: Perfect Score by Susan Roebuck. It's set in 1960s when not much was known about the condition.
    It's interesting to have some sort of disability because the MC can show his/her courage and strength overcoming such problems. And gain readers' sympathy :) Nice post - I'd love to hear more of disabilities in literature, so I'll keep popping back. (I'll also put up a link on FB to you).

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  3. I appreciate this is not due to a stroke but my late husband had brain cancer and quite suddenly the only word he could say was "YES"
    Why that particular word I don't know. Months later I met somone whose daughter-in - law had the same illness and her only word was "YES" also. Very strange perhaps it was due to the area of the brain I don't know.

    Yvonne.

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  4. I'm glad I stumbled back here to see how you were doing. I watched the video. I knew music had power, they use it for Alzheimer patients and God only knows what else. I was amazed at the video. In my book, Bum's Rush, one of my main characters has a severe stutter. His form of communication is signing. Wouldn't it have been interesting to use Aphasia instead. I wouldn't change it, it worked for my purposes. Mil Tillis, you may or may not remember or know, country music star, had a severe stutter and sang like a bird. That always impressed me. Thanks for this inspirational moment.

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  5. I think determining how much is too much depends on what kind of weaknesses the MC has, what's motivating the character, and what the disability means to the others in the story. I read a book where the character was immobile and had seizures (Stuck In Neutral by Terry Trueman) yet he could think just as well as someone normal--with a great contrast between how he appeared to others and what he himself thought.

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  6. Hi, just read your email. Sadly my husband passed away 13 yrs ago from the brain cancer,
    You wasn't to know and I am past the grieving process, just proud to have been married to a wonderful man.
    Yvonne.

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  7. I learned about aphasias when I was studying linguistics. The one that fascinated me the most was transcortical aphasia, where a person only repeats what is said to them, without any apparent understanding. I wrote a flash fiction story from the POV of a character with that condition.

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