This condition affects language comprehension and production, caused in his case by an arteriovenous malformation that burst in 1985. What 1985 Took and What It Didn'tFrank was 19 when the surgery changed his relationship with language. "I never felt that I had lost my ability to think," Frank told me. Patients with severe aphasia, who had lost significant language function, reasoned just as accurately as people without aphasia. In the 1980s, understanding of aphasia was limited, and the confusion between losing language and losing intelligence was nearly universal.