RESUMO
Hepatic encephalopathy is a reversible neuro-psychiatric syndrome that complicates liver insufficiency. The changes are complex and disorders are detected in digestive and neural systems. Disturbed consciousness and intellectual deterioration, particularly communicative difficulties are observed: speech is slurred, voice monotonous, writing disturbances, amimic face and rigid posture. Difficulties of socialization and tendency to self-isolation are observed. Memory, attention and perception are decreased. We suppose that disorders of cognitive functions are determined by impairment of speech and other communicative abilities. According to the theories of linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity thought categories move through the mould of native language. That means, speech impairment causes misperception of the real world. To confirm this hypothesis we investigated 106 patients with following diseases: peptic ulcer - 46, fatty liver - 30, liver cirrhosis - 19, viral hepatitis - 11 and 19 controls. Brain magnetic resonance tomography was carried out and psychometric tests were performed to patients with symptoms of hepatic encephalopathy. Atrophic changes in frontal, temporal and insular area of brain cortex were revealed in most cases. Those regions are responsible for actor observation, imitation and emotion, i.e. for empathy and sociability. They are very sensitive to the increased levels of ammonia and glutamine. In case of early treatment only slight atrophic changes are presented but without treatment atrophic processes become stable and expressed by impairments of speech and entire communicative ability. Human beings are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. They do not live in the objective world alone, or in the world of social activity alone. Accordingly, damage of speech in hepatic encephalopathy is primary and predisposes to cognitive dysfunction.
