If a patient has preserved motor speech abilities but naming difficulties, which condition is likely?

Anomic aphasia is characterized by preserved motor speech abilities alongside significant difficulties in naming objects, known as anomia. In individuals with this type of aphasia, speech production is fluent and grammatical, but they struggle to find the right words during conversation, particularly nouns and verbs. They are often aware of their difficulty and may use circumlocutions or fillers as they try to retrieve the appropriate word.

This condition typically arises due to damage in areas of the brain that are involved in word retrieval but does not affect the production of coherent speech. As a result, the patient's overall speech ability remains intact, except for specific issues with naming, making anomic aphasia the likely condition given the described symptoms.

The other options represent different aphasia types and are characterized by more significant impairments in speech production or comprehension, differentiating them from anomic aphasia's specific features.