Cognitive Neurology
Aphasia syndrome localizer
Teach aphasia through bedside dissociations: fluency, comprehension, repetition, naming, reading, and writing. The goal is to localize the language-network bottleneck before jumping straight to stroke labels or rehab slogans.
Syndrome presets
Start from the bedside language split
These presets are organized around the classroom-level language dissociations students actually remember: nonfluent versus fluent, repetition spared versus broken, and comprehension relatively intact versus heavily impaired.
Language profile
Which channels are preserved and which ones break
Spontaneous sample
"...want... water... no... hospital... home."
This is the first bedside clue students usually hear before any formal testing starts.
Repetition split
Repetition versus the rest of the profile
Repetition
34%
Split
+32
Positive values mean repetition is worse than the rest of the language profile; negative values mean repetition is paradoxically spared.
Auditory load
How fragile spoken-language comprehension becomes
Higher load means spoken language rapidly outruns the patient’s ability to map sound onto meaning.
Phenotype
Broca aphasia
Effortful, agrammatic output with relatively preserved comprehension and disproportionately impaired repetition.
Fluency
18%
Speech rate, phrase length, and grammatical ease.
Comprehension
82%
How well bedside spoken language remains grounded in meaning.
Naming
44%
Object naming is often the clinical bridge between language knowledge and output bottlenecks.
Reading/Writing
44%
Written language often mirrors the same network bottleneck but can still expose extra dissociations.
Dominant hemisphere map
Which language node is most implicated
Dominant inferior frontal gyrus and adjacent anterior perisylvian language network.
Network logic
Why this bedside split happens
Language formulation and articulatory sequencing are bottlenecked, so the patient knows much more than they can efficiently convert into fluent propositional speech.
Weaker alternative
What not to confuse this with
Dysarthria alone is weaker because the problem is not just articulation: grammar, phrase length, and spontaneous verbal generation are all reduced.
Repetition
34%
One of the fastest high-yield pivots in bedside aphasia classification.
Naming
44%
Naming often fails across syndromes, but the reason it fails differs by network bottleneck.
Bedside probes
The task-level dissociations that settle the syndrome
Repetition probe
Fails on "No ifs, ands, or buts" with effortful fragments and omissions.
Repetition is the fastest bedside clue for separating core perisylvian aphasias from transcortical patterns.
Comprehension probe
Follows one- and two-step commands reasonably well, especially when syntax stays simple.
Command following tells you whether meaning is preserved, not just whether the patient can stay engaged.
Naming probe
Frequent word-finding pauses with preserved recognition of the target object.
Naming failure alone is nonspecific, but how it fails gives you the localization edge.
Reading and writing
Reading comprehension can exceed written output; writing often mirrors the agrammatism seen in speech.
Written language can echo or sharpen the same syndrome seen in speech.
Conversational sample
Short phrases, telegraphic grammar, and obvious effort.
Primary problem is language output formulation rather than a pure motor speech issue.
Auditory commands
Simple comprehension is much better than spontaneous expression.
Supports dominant frontal language-network injury over global aphasia.
Sentence repetition
Repetition collapses once phrase length and syntax increase.
Helps separate Broca and conduction patterns from transcortical motor aphasia.
Supportive communication
Rehab and teaching stance
- Slow the exchange and accept multimodal output such as gesture, writing, or key words.
- Use yes/no checks carefully, because comprehension is better than spontaneous verbal output.
- Keep commands syntactically simple while preserving adult-level content.
Continue the loop
Pair language with stroke, neglect, anatomy, and tutoring
Brain Atlas
Post-clinical anatomical convergence
Stroke Vascular Territories
Acute neurovascular localization
Neglect Localizer
Consult-level spatial-attention localization
Neuro Tutor
Cross-module consult reasoning with explicit scoring