Disturbance of equilibrium

An imbalance occurs mainly when the cerebellum or parts of the brain stem are affected. It is usually one of the first symptoms triggered by a stroke. On the one hand, the areas of the brain that process information from our vestibular organ can be affected. On the other hand, nerve cells can be affected, which receive balance information from our muscles and thus generate information about our current body position. In combination with possible paralysis, people affected by impaired balance can be at considerable risk of falling.

Swindle

Especially if the brain stem is damaged, a pronounced dizziness can be a consequence of a stroke. Three different forms can be distinguished. In most cases, the brain gets used to the disturbance of the sense of balance some time after the stroke and the symptoms are significantly reduced.

Patients with a rotary vertigo have the feeling that everything is constantly revolving around them, as is the case on a carousel, for example. This form is often accompanied by severe nausea in the beginning.
The Schwankschwindel however is often compared with standing on a boat. Patients usually have a dominant side, which is associated with a significantly increased risk of falling.
The so-called fear of falling describes the feeling of standing in a descending elevator, which creates the impression of falling.

Speech disorder

Speech disorders occur in about 30% of all patients as a result of a stroke. This disorder, also known as aphasia, occurs when the speech-dominant hemisphere of the brain is affected by damage. In most people this is the left hemisphere of the brain.

The form and severity of the disorder of speech ability can vary greatly.

The most severe manifestation is the so-called “global aphasia”. In this case, speech comprehension and speech production are massively impaired, so that linguistic communication can become very difficult or even impossible.
In contrast, in “Wernicke’s aphasia” only the understanding of speech is disturbed.
Patients are conspicuous above all by the formation of very long, nested sentences, which often make no sense in terms of content, but which the patients are often unaware of. The flow of speech is not disturbed.
On the other hand, a loss of speech production is called “Broca’s aphasia”. While comprehension is not disturbed, those affected can no longer produce coherent sentences.
The consequence is communication with individual words or sentence components. In this context one speaks of a telegram style.
The last form of aphasia is the “amnesic aphasia”. This is characterized by a pronounced word finding disorder, whereby forgotten words are often replaced by similar terms (e.g. car instead of bicycle).