| | | Presidential aphasia:
Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions.
The major causes are a cerebral vascular accident (stroke), or head trauma, but aphasia can also be the result of brain tumors, brain infections, or neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia
I’ll break down his recent “COVID-19 and antibiotics” discussion to show why I think he has aphasia.
To summarise, he comes across as someone who’s been briefed with the “explain it to me like I’m a five year old” version of why COVID-19 is so dangerous, but when he tries to repeat it, can’t recall the specific terms. On top of that, the coping mechanism he has for inability to recall terms is to just keep going. And as we’ll see, that leads to problems.
Here’s the transcript of his statements, with my comments:
“This is a very brilliant enemy. You know, it’s a brilliant enemy.”
Okay, not a bad start.“They develop drugs like the antibiotics. You see it. Antibiotics used to solve every problem. Now one of the biggest problems the world has is the germ has gotten so brilliant that the antibiotic can’t keep up with it.”
This is wrong because viruses have got nothing to do with antibiotics.But he’s understood that bit of the ‘explain it to me like I’m a five year old’ version of how viruses work - the problem is ‘clever germs’ that ‘antibiotics don’t work against’.So, basically, he’s still doing fine.“And they're constantly trying to come up with a new –”
And here it goes wrong. He can’t recall the specific word (maybe “anti-viral”) and instead of stopping to think of it, keeps going, perhaps hoping to think of the word and then get back on track.“people go to a hospital and they catch –”
Now it goes really wrong, because he can’t recall another word (maybe “COVID-19”). And, again, instead of stopping to think of it, he keeps going.“they go for a heart operation – that's no problem, but they end up dying from –”
He just can’t get that word! (probably “COVID-19” again). Now he’s in all sorts of trouble.“– from problems. You know the problems I'm talking about.”
As a last resort, he substitutes a generic term for the word he was trying to recall and tries to cover up his failure to recall it with an appeal to the listener to fill in the blanks.“There's a whole genius to it.”
Thinks he’s got away with it and wraps up as best he can.His statement comes across as an incoherent mess, and it is in the end, but it started off okay.
It was only when he couldn’t think of the right word (maybe “anti-viral”) that it started to go off track. And once he couldn’t think of the second word (maybe “COVID-19”) he was in a world of hurt.
It all suddenly makes sense once you realise the coping mechanism he’s using - when he can’t recall a word he goes on a bit of a tangent, keeping talking while his brain tries to dredge the right word up.
This coping strategy used to work when he only failed to recall the occasional word - which is why in older interviews he seems a bit random but basically coherent. But now he’s going on tangents to the tangents, and no one has any idea what he’s trying to say.
If he’d paused after, “And they're constantly trying to come up with a new –” and said something like, “Oh what's the word… antiviral. Yeah, they’re constantly trying to come up with a new anti-viral.”, then he wouldn’t have got in the mess he ended up getting in.
But he’s decided to cope by just keeping going, and the end result is incoherent nonsense.
So, I think it’s clear that he has aphasia, but what caused the aphasia is unknown - a minor stroke or dementia are possibilities. |
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