Aphemia Aphemia is the alternate term for mutism . Mutism is an absence of speech with an apparently normal level of consciousness. Mutism can be dissociative (hysterical) in which an individual (commonly a child or adolescent) stops speaking at once without the involvement of any neurological or physical contributing factor, or it can be elective (selective) in which a child does not speak at all in certain situations (such as in school) but speaks well in other conditions (like at home or at play). A rare cause of mutism is akinetic mutism which results due to a lesion around the 3rd ventricle of the brain. Copyright Notice Adapted from Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 ; additional terms may apply.