Damage to Wernicke's area, a region in the left temporal lobe, results in receptive aphasia, or Wernicke's aphasia. This impairs one's ability to understand language. Things are not usually so clear-cut in reality. Individual differences in brain function and differences in location and spread of damage means that impairment is unique to the individual. There are some general symptoms aphasic individuals can experience.
Word finding difficulties, or anomia, can be frustrating and slow down communicaiton.
Some people try to work around word finding diffficulty by giving descriptions or definitions or talking around their difficulties. This is called circumloction. A person with aphasia might use an incorrect word or unrecognizable word in place of the target word. This is a paraphasia. Paraphasias can be classified in 3 types.