What is the most common cause of apraxia? (2023)

What is apraxia caused by?

Apraxia results from dysfunction of the cerebral hemispheres of your brain, especially the parietal lobe (which his involved with movement coordination and processing sensations such as taste, hearing, and touch), and can arise from many diseases or damage to the brain.

These children often continue to make progress in speech intervention throughout adolescence, and although they never achieve normal speech, progress is made and speech often remains their primary means of communication.

Liepmann discussed three types of apraxia: melokinetic (or limb‐kinetic), ideomotor, and ideational.

Damage to the parts of the brain that control how your muscles move causes apraxia of speech. Any type of brain damage can cause apraxia. This includes stroke, traumatic brain injury, dementia, brain tumors, and brain diseases that get worse over time.

Children between ages 2 – 3 may also be difficult to firmly diagnose with CAS. Some can and some cannot. There is no strict age as to when a child can be diagnosed with CAS.

Apraxia is usually caused by damage to the parietal lobes or to nerve pathways that connect these lobes to other parts of the brain, such as frontal and/or temporal lobes. These areas store memories of learned sequences of movements. Less often, apraxia results from damage to other areas of the brain.

A Pediatric Neurologist may be helpful if there are overall neurological concerns in addition to speech. If you are concerned about whether or not there is a problem of brain structure, wonder about possible seizures, and other brain related activities, the neurologist can help.

CAS is sometimes called verbal dyspraxia or developmental apraxia. Even though the word “developmental" is used, CAS is not a problem that children outgrow. A child with CAS will not learn speech sounds in typical order and will not make progress without treatment.

Children diagnosed with Apraxia of Speech often struggle with reading and comprehension. This is because if your child is having difficulties saying the sounds, they will also have difficulties reading the sounds.

Speech therapy. Your child's speech-language pathologist will usually provide therapy that focuses on practicing syllables, words and phrases. When CAS is relatively severe, your child may need frequent speech therapy, three to five times a week. As your child improves, the frequency of speech therapy may be reduced.

How can you tell if someone has apraxia?

Difficulty moving smoothly from one sound, syllable or word to another. Groping movements with the jaw, lips or tongue to make the correct movement for speech sounds. Vowel distortions, such as attempting to use the correct vowel, but saying it incorrectly.

Treatment for apraxia of speech should be intensive and may last several years depending on the severity of your child's disorder. Many children with childhood apraxia of speech benefit from: Multiple repetitions and repeated practice of sound sequences, words and phrases during therapy.

Children who have CAS do not outgrow the condition and there is no cure. Early treatment alleviates frustration that your child may show if they want to say something but are unable to communicate that message.

In some cases of acquired apraxia, the condition resolves spontaneously. This is not the case with childhood apraxia of speech, which does not go away without treatment. There are various treatment approaches used for apraxia. How effective they are can vary from person to person.

Please note that children with apraxia and other communication problems can and have successfully moved on in grade level or school setting with appropriate support and attention.

Oral Apraxia is a disorder where a child exhibits difficulty easily coordinating and initiating movement of the jaw, lips, tongue and soft palate. This may impact feeding and/or speech skills.

It can be so mild that it causes trouble with only a few speech sounds or with pronunciation of words that have many syllables. In the most severe cases, someone with AOS might not be able to communicate effectively by speaking, and may need the help of alternative communication methods.

The study concluded that participants with apraxia of speech presented a working memory deficit and that this was probably related to the articulatory process of the phonoarticulatory loop. Furthermore, all apraxic patients presented a compromise in working memory.

Summary: Dementia is defined as a decline from a prior level of cognitive and behavioral function and is commonly associated with deficits in learned skilled movements or apraxia.

Is apraxia inherited?

Childhood apraxia of speech is a genetic disease, which means that it is caused by one or more genes not working correctly.

You may be referring to the recent report that speech apraxia – a relatively rare disorder – affects up to 65 percent of children with autism. The report's authors urge that any child being screened for one disorder also be screened for the other.

Results: Our results show that 63.6% of children initially diagnosed with autism also had apraxia, 36.8% of children initially diagnosed with apraxia also had autism, 23.3% had neither, and 23.3% had both. Overall diagnostic accuracy for the CASD was 96.7%.

Because patients and even many medical professionals don't recognize apraxia of speech, treatment typically is sought in later stages of the disease, says Dr. Josephs. As apraxia progresses, it frequently is misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Apraxia of speech is very rare, and only affects 1 or 2 children in every 1,000 who visit a speech pathologist.

Individuals with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) who present with highly unintelligible speech may experience difficulty in social encounters throughout their childhood (Rusiewicz et al., 2018; Tarshis et al., 2020).

Apraxia of speech is not a developmental disability, though people with childhood AOS often have family members who have been diagnosed with learning disabilities and other communication disorders. It is also not caused by weakness or paralysis of the speech muscles. AOS is a type of neurodivergence.

Apraxia of speech can be caused by several things. These include a stroke, an injury to the head, a brain tumour, or a disease of the nervous system. Sometimes it's caused by a condition that gets worse over time. In that case, the apraxia of speech may get worse too.

The evaluation most likely will include the following: A complete inventory of the sounds, syllable shapes (consonant and vowel combinations that make up syllables), and words a child can make or attempts to make will be noted, as well as any “mistakes” the child makes when doing so.

CAS can result problems getting wants and needs met. This may make the child and family frustrated. CAS can also make it hard for children to be independent, make friends, or play with other children. Children with CAS are at risk for problems with reading and writing.

Is apraxia caused by trauma?

Share on Pinterest Head trauma, stroke, and dementia are all possible causes of apraxia. Apraxia happens when certain regions of the cerebral hemispheres in the brain do not work properly . This dysfunction may occur if a lesion in the brain forms across the neural pathways that store memories of learned movements.

When it's caused by a stroke, apraxia of speech typically does not worsen and may get better over time. But, apraxia of speech often is ignored as a distinct entity that can evolve into a neurologic disorder, causing difficulty with eye movement, using the limbs, walking and falling that worsens as time passes.

The Kaufman Speech Praxis Test (KSPT) is a norm-referenced, diagnostic test assisting in the identification and treatment of childhood apraxia of speech.

Praxis has long been considered a left hemisphere function. For instance, apraxia occurs more frequently in patients with left versus right hemisphere injury [7,13,31,32].

While there is no CURE, regular and intensive speech therapy using the principles of motor learning that is accessed early in the child's life/diagnosis is known to best treat CAS. This means consistent attendance to therapy where the Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) has experience in treating CAS.

Treatments for apraxia of speech

Childhood apraxia of speech will not go away without treatment. However, a child with apraxia can improve speech over time with the correct treatment and intervention.

3. Symptoms of apraxia of speech can overlap with those of other disorders like autism. Apraxia can sometimes get mistaken for another condition such as autism because they can have some of the same symptoms, such as difficulty making eye contact when trying to talk and sensory issues.

CAS is not a disorder that can be “outgrown,” rather children with CAS will not make progress without treatment. There is little data available about how many children have childhood apraxia of speech.

If your child has apraxia of speech – either as a primary condition or associated with another condition – then he or she may be eligible to receive disability benefits through the Social Security Administration's (SSA's) Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program and/or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) ...