Prepare for the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP) Exam with flashcards and multiple-choice questions. Each question includes insights and explanations to help you excel. Get ready for your certification journey!

Multiple Choice

Transcortical motor aphasia is typically associated with stroke in which territory?

Transcortical motor aphasia occurs when the dominant frontal language planning networks are disrupted while the core perisylvian language cortex is spared. The classic lesion is a border-zone stroke between the left anterior cerebral artery and left middle cerebral artery territories. This interrupts the frontal areas involved in initiating and shaping speech (often around the supplementary motor area) but leaves the language cortex intact, so repetition remains preserved and comprehension is relatively intact, while spontaneous speech is nonfluent. That’s why a left ACA-MCA watershed stroke best fits transcortical motor aphasia. Left MCA stem strokes would typically produce a Broca-type aphasia with impaired repetition, and right-hemisphere strokes in a right-handed individual don’t usually cause aphasia.

Transcortical motor aphasia occurs when the dominant frontal language planning networks are disrupted while the core perisylvian language cortex is spared. The classic lesion is a border-zone stroke between the left anterior cerebral artery and left middle cerebral artery territories. This interrupts the frontal areas involved in initiating and shaping speech (often around the supplementary motor area) but leaves the language cortex intact, so repetition remains preserved and comprehension is relatively intact, while spontaneous speech is nonfluent.

That’s why a left ACA-MCA watershed stroke best fits transcortical motor aphasia. Left MCA stem strokes would typically produce a Broca-type aphasia with impaired repetition, and right-hemisphere strokes in a right-handed individual don’t usually cause aphasia.