Conduction aphasia is best described as?

• A. Disconnection between auditory and motor representations
• B. Nonfluent speech with good comprehension
• C. Fluent speech with impaired comprehension
• D. Global language impairment

Answer: (A)

Conduction aphasia results from a disruption in the connection between the brain areas that understand language and those that plan and execute speech. The typical pattern is fluent speech with good comprehension, but impaired repetition, often with phonemic paraphasias, because the auditory representations of spoken language can’t reliably guide the motor plans for repeating or accurately producing speech. This reflects a disconnection between auditory (comprehension) and motor (speech production) representations, usually due to damage to the pathway connecting Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area (the arcuate fasciculus). This profile is distinct from other aphasias: it’s not nonfluent speech with good comprehension (that describes Broca’s aphasia), nor fluent speech with poor comprehension (that describes Wernicke’s aphasia), nor a global language impairment that affects all language modalities.