Overview

Wel-come to Arth-Dhwani.com. I am Doctor Apoorva Pauranik, retired Professor of Neurology from Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College and Maharaja Yashwant Rav Hospital, Indore.

Arth-Dhwani Meaning and Sound. Language is fundamental to human experience. It is fundamental to being human being. Not only ‘Arth & Dhwani’, (meaning and sound) but there are a few more salient words related to this field like word, syllable, letter, sound, phoneme grapheme, clause, sentence, subclause, paragraph, discourse, communication, thoughts and so on.

All these things concepts are related to speech and communication and language. We take these functions for granted until unless we loose them, or someone close to us or we ourself. There are many pathological conditions (diseases). Some of them are present since birth, they are developmental and some are acquired later on. They were initially normal but somehow got a brain disease and developed problems with speech and communication in a later age One such condition is aphasia. In hindi we call it “VachaGhat”. As a neurologist, I see large number of people who are suffering from aphasia and other related disorders of speech language communication.

This website “arth-dhwani” has been created with the purpose of providing a variety of assessment tools for such patients.

1. One of them is HASIT-Hindi Aphasia Indoor Screening Test. It's a brief test for assessment of aphasia, to determine whether the patient is having problem with language communication, is he suffering from aphasia or not. It takes five to ten minutes. Then in the pipeline are a slightly longer versions like HABIT, wherein the ‘B’ stands for ‘Brief’, HAFIT where the ‘F’ stands for ‘Full’. HRWIT where the ‘R’ and ‘W’ stand for Reading and Writing.
2. LEAP - Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire. When we clinically evaluate persons suffering from speech communication and language disorders, we have to take into account how many languages are used and with what proficiency by a given person. This is a Self-Assessment Questionnaire to be filled by the person sometimes by himself herself or sometimes with the help of someone more knowledgeable in surveying these type of questionnaires.
3. Next is ‘Handedness Questionnaire’ by which we determine hand you use more right hand you are a right-hander or a left-hander and there is a simple Hindi adaptation of ‘Edinburgh Handedness Inventory’.