Anomia

Meaning: Anomia is difficulty retrieving the word for a known object, person, or place. The person understands what the item is and can often describe its use ("the thing you write with"), but the name will not come. Comprehension, fluency, and repetition are fairly well preserved. Its pure form is anomic aphasia. It is linked to damage in left-hemisphere language areas, often temporal or parietal cortex, but it can follow damage almost anywhere in the language network.

On the MCAT: A vignette describes a patient who cannot name a pictured object yet speaks fluently, understands questions, and repeats phrases. Contrast it with Broca's aphasia (nonfluent, effortful speech, comprehension largely intact), Wernicke's aphasia (fluent but meaningless speech, poor comprehension), and conduction aphasia (poor repetition, arcuate fasciculus).

Common confusion: Anomia is not Durkheim's anomie, the societal normlessness that can lead to deviance or anomic suicide. Sociologists such as Srole also use the spelling anomia for an individual's feeling of normlessness, so read the context: naming trouble signals the language disorder. Anomia is also a retrieval problem, not a loss of the concept itself.