Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Sentence Production Impairment in Aphasia
University of Maryland, College Park
Summary
The proposed research is relevant to public health because stroke is a leading cause of long-term disability among older adults and communication impairments resulting from stroke have a significant negative impact on quality of life. By seeking to better understand post-stroke aphasia, this project lays the groundwork for development of new interventions, and aligns with NIDCD's priority areas 1 (understanding normal function), 2 (understanding diseases), and 3 (improving diagnosis, treatment, and prevention).
Description
Post-stroke agrammatic aphasia (PSA-G) is characterized by a cluster of symptoms (fragmented sentences, errors in functional morphology, a dearth of verbs, and slow speech rate), yet extant theories and language interventions focus on individual symptoms. This single-symptom theoretical and intervention focus results in limited gains in functional communication. The long-term goal of this research is to improve the clinical effectiveness of interventions for PSA-G. As a first step towards this goal, this project's objective is to advance the theoretical framework of PSA-G by addressing two cr…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 18+ years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Yes
Inclusion Criteria: * At least 18 years of age * Persons with acquired aphasia are defined as those with a language impairment following left hemisphere brain injury (most likely a stroke). * Neurotypical adults need to be either young (ages 18-30 years) or older (\> 60 years) * Native (or primary) speakers of English Exclusion Criteria: * Prior neurological or psychiatric diagnoses or developmental disabilities before the onset of aphasia * do not speak English fluently
Interventions
- BehavioralLanguage Condition
The intervention involves asking participants to speak and understand words and sentences with different linguistic manipulations such as morphological, semantic, phonological priming, predictability of the subject and object nouns associated with verbs, naming of verbs and nouns, production of sentences with past, future or present tense. Accuracy, response times and brain activity are the outcome measures.
Location
- University of MarylandCollege Park, Maryland