Brain and language plasticity: Speech production and aphasia

Speaker: Dr Jenny Crinion, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, UK

As a Speech and Language Therapist, ‘They can’t speak’ is the most common reason why stroke patients are referred to me for rehabilitation. Around 250,000 people in the UK have chronic aphasia after stroke. Almost all suffer from anomia irrespective of where their lesion is and their other, concomitant speech and language deficits. As such, anomia and its treatment represent a significant behavioural target of recovery from aphasic stroke.

In this talk I will highlight some of the work we have done to understand the neural mechanisms underlying spoken language production in healthy adults and aphasic stroke patients. To address these aims we use whole-brain high-resolution structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), along with neuropsychological examination and behavioural training of aphasic patients. This provides a powerful platform to understand the causes of spoken language change following brain damage.