Alalia Treatment in children

Dysphasia or alalia is a speech disorder with complete absence of speech or its underdevelopment in child with normal hearing and intelligence. It’s possible intellectual development disorder associated with limitation of knowledge about the world around versus age mates if treatment of alalia in children was started late (4-5 years).

Speech disorder affects more boys than girls (2 times). Alalia (dysphasia) is understood as comprehensive language disorder that can be seen as inability to pronounce sounds correctly or as inability to form a sentence correctly when the child speaks in part.

Disorder can be of varying degrees – in difficult cases a child doesn’t babble in his/her childhood or doesn’t speak in adult. Easy cases are characterized by mild speech impairments, agramatism fraught with difficulties in reading and writing. In our Mind Stimulation Center we are ready to help you in both cases. Our main mission is to provide our patients with a fulfilling future and comprehensive socialization. That is why our specialists fight to the end for the patient's ability to speak, even in the most severe and neglected cases.

Classification of Alalia

There are several classifications that are based on different criteria - degree of severity, presence/absence of psychoneurological symptoms of the problem, symptom principles, the nature of the impairment of individual language systems, etc.

Forms of the disease depending on the presence or absence of psychoneurological symptoms of alalia are:

• pure (uncomplicated);
• combined (complicated).

According to intensity:

• the mild form is characterized by minor abnormalities in the development of speech;
• the severe form is speech may be absent up to 12 years of age.

Depending on the symptomatic principle, there are three levels of underdevelopment of speech:

• level 1 - there is a lack of common speech;
• level 2 - combinations of babbling agrammatical words appear, the syllabic structure is noticeably disturbed;
• level 3 - there are lexical-grammatical and phonetic-phonemic errors in everyday speech.

Depending on the nature of impairment of individual language systems, the following types of alalia are distinguished:

• with a uniform type of impairment;
• with an uneven type of impairment.

Types of alalia according to the pathogenetic principle:

• according to Liebmann - sensory, motor, sensory-motor hearing loss;
• according to Levina - with primary violation of phonemic hearing, with violation of visual perception, with articulation disorders, with mental activity disorders;
• according to Kovshikov - expressive (corresponds to motor), impresive (sensory).

Motor alalia is a condition in which motor areas are affected. The child understands when spoken to, but cannot answer (systemic underdevelopment of speech).

Sensory alalia is a condition accompanied by lesions in the sensory areas that are responsible for the perception and recognition of speech. The child does not understand when spoken to, so the pathology is associated with an underdevelopment of active (motor speech), while the hearing of such children is not impaired.

Sensomotor alalia (mixed) is characterized by simultaneous impairment of one's own speech and that of others.

More often clients come to the Center for Brain Stimulation for treatment of sensory-motor alalia in children of various degrees of severity.

Causation of disease

Development of alalia occurs due to underdevelopment of the brain cells localized in the large hemisphere cortex and subcortical structures. Their developmental disorder occurs against the background of provocative factors that occur at different periods of the child's life.

The main causes of alalia:

• during the intrauterine period - various pathologies, severe toxicosis, somatic diseases, bleeding, improper fetal position, Rh conflict, etc.;
• during the delivery - premature or late delivery, abnormal (prolonged or rapid) delivery, stimulation, fetal asphyxia, etc.;
• during the preverbal period - childhood infections, acute respiratory infections, pneumonia, some stomach diseases, head injuries.

Also, it should not be forgotten that alalia is often one of the symptoms of mental retardation, neurological disorders, and they are also its causes.

Pathogenesis

In motor alalia the conductive pathways between the premotor, postcentral and temporal areas of the brain are not fully formed, mainly in the left hemisphere (responsible for speech development).

In sensory alalia, the connections between the right and left cerebral hemispheres are absent or undeveloped.

In terms of organic damage to the brain, the maturation of nerve cells slows down, so they remain young immature neuroblasts. At the same time, a number of disorders occur: the excitability of neurons is reduced, brain cells are depleted, and the main nervous processes are blocked. Brain lesions are poorly pronounced, but are multiple in nature, so the independent possibility of speech development is limited.

Signs of alalia

If a child does not speak from the age of one, speaks little or incorrectly, parents are the first to suspect something complex and irreversible. But delayed speech development can be temporary and functional, if the child has had little communication, parents also have problems with speech or he or she was exposed to a new language environment at an early age.

The symptomatology depends on which areas of the brain are affected. There are many manifestations of alalia in children. They are conventionally divided into speech, neurological and psychopathological.

Alalic children are awkward, resentful and withdrawn. They have impaired fine motor skills, have difficulty concentrating, and have problems making inferences. However, even in the presence of symptoms, only a specialist can unequivocally determine the presence of a problem. Therefore, if you have any suspicions that your child has signs of alalia, you should contact the Center for Brain Stimulation for a consultation with a neurologist.

Complications

Lack of timely comprehensive treatment of alalia in children can lead to a profound delay in psycho-speech development. The child has difficulties with concentration, memory, cognitive activity. In the absence of psycho-speech development in children with alalia, maladaptation is formed, and mental retardation is possible.

Sometimes stuttering occurs in sensory-motor alalia, but it is not considered a complication of the disease, but a consequence of significant damage to the brain areas responsible for speech development.

Diagnosis of alalia

The first stage of diagnosis is consultation with a neurologist, speech therapist, audiologist, teacher-defectologist to assess the degree of speech impairment, determine deficits and secondary disorders.

An EEG is prescribed to detect brain damage, and in some cases an MRI of the brain is required.

Otoacoustic emission (OAE) and audiograms are performed to detect auditory impairment.

As part of the neuropsychological diagnosis, which assesses the child's mental functions, the doctor performs the Wechsler test to measure intelligence and the Munich Functional Diagnostic (MFD), which is designed to assess the psychomotor skills of young children.

Correction of alalia requires an individualized, comprehensive approach, so our medical center specialists determine which brain structures need to be developed. Based on this, as well as the age and individual characteristics of the young patient, treatment methods are selected.

Alalia the symptoms of which depend on the form of the disease requires individual selection of correction techniques.

Treatment of motor alalia is aimed at restoring and improving active speech, activation of speech function, but sometimes begins with a delay. After all, speech development is an individual parameter, not all parents are inclined to see an alarming symptom in the fact that the child does not speak, but understands everything and is developing normally. And people around you will definitely have a «soothing» story about an acquaintance who kept quiet until he was 5, and then he started talking. This is why it is too late to go to a center for the treatment of alalia.

Treatment of sensory alalia is continuous and lengthy and includes sessions with a speech therapist, psychoneurologist, Tomatis audio therapy, and medication therapy. After recovery, the child needs to be under medical supervision and continue speech therapy sessions to prevent relapse and to consolidate the results of the correction.

Treatment of sensorimotor alalia is the most difficult and time-consuming. Often, children with this diagnosis do not speak at all and have signs of mental retardation. In this case, it is very important to begin treatment of alalia as early as possible.

The systemic nature of the disease determines the systemic approach to its correction, so at our medical center all patients with alalia undergo corrective courses according to a special most effective and optimal program.

Treatment results

The prognosis for the motor form of the disease is favorable. The effectiveness of correction in sensory and sensory-motor forms depends on a number of factors: the presence of concomitant pathologies and psychosomatic disorders, the nature of the lesion of the speech center of the brain.

Disease prevention

Prevention of alalia in a child is to ensure favorable conditions for pregnancy, prolonged breastfeeding, early physical development, timely diagnosis of congenital abnormalities, as well as the complex development of the child.

Advices and recommendations

In order to timely notice a child's signs of alalia, parents should:

• constantly take care of child and make sure his or her speech skills are age-appropriate;
• visit an otolaryngologist to rule out a congenital hearing loss;
• visit a child psychotherapist and neurologist.

If there is the slightest suspicion of retardation in development, it is necessary to immediately contact specialists. There is no need to panic, alalia, the diagnosis and treatment of which must be carried out comprehensively, can be corrected.

Who does treat alalia?

At the Center for Brain Stimulation the disease is treated by a team of highly specialized doctors - a neurologist, a child psychiatrist, a neuropsychologist, a speech therapist and a speech pathologist. The medical staff may vary depending on the form of dysphasia and the child's characteristics.

Advantages of treating Aalalia in children at the Center for Brain Stimulation

Treatment with us is:

1. Affordable cost.
2. Broad experience in treating patients with severe forms of alalia.
3. Reputation confirmed by successful cases and years of successful work.
4. Convenient location of the clinic in an environmentally clean district.
5. Comprehensive solution to the problem with individual choice of techniques.
6. Services of experienced narrow specialization doctors.
7. Use of modern diagnostic and treatment methods and certified equipment: «Reamed Polaris», Tomatis Besson, Tomatis Besson, Interacoustics (Denmark), barochamber, «Braintest» (encephalograph), concentrators Oxygen «Biomed» 7F-5 (Ukraine) and «ReOxy» (Germany), FORBRAIN ® (device, allowing to train the brain processing of auditory information, The child hears his or her own voice in a corrected form, while the brain is forced to rearrange its work in response to these changes), Bactosfera lamps for quartzing the air.

Remember that in fact, all children with alalia can, but do not know how to speak. Our clinic uses effective and safe techniques to teach speaking to children of all ages with any type of the disease.

Doctors

The Center for Brain Stimulation is staffed by doctors with broad experience in helping special children and supporting their parents. Each doctor is a professional in his or her field of medicine, fluent in modern diagnostic and therapeutic techniques.

Have you noticed signs of developmental delays in your child? Do you need consultations of experienced pediatricians and treatment of alalia? Specialists at the Center for Brain Stimulation are always ready to help in solving any health problems. Visit the Center for Brain Stimulation: we will choose an individual course of dysphasia correction for your child that is sure to bring positive results!

Sources

• Ukrainian Wikipedia 
• World health organization