MODEL RELEASED. Speech therapist working with a stroke patient. The patient, a 69-year old woman, had a stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain two weeks previously. This left her with hemiparesis (unilateral paralysis) and aphasia. Aphasia is a speech disorder affecting the generation of speech and its understanding, rather than simply an inability to articulate. The therapist is seen here working on the patient's speech and understanding on a single-word level. The left side of the brain is dominant in right- handed people, in a left handed person aphasia is caused by a stroke in the right hemisphere.