The sequelae of post-stroke aphasia are considerable, necessitating an understanding of the functional neuroanatomy of language, cognitive processes underlying various language tasks, and the mechanisms of recovery after stroke. This knowledge is vital in providing optimal care of individuals with aphasia and counseling to their families and caregivers. The standard of care in the rehabilitatio...

Patients with Wernicke's or expressive aphasia are able to produce fluent speech, however, this speech may be complete gibberish sounds and totally incomprehensible, or even when comprehensible to a degree is often laced with severe errors and abnormalities such as verbal and phonemic paraphasias and neologisms. Furthermore, patient's with Wernicke's aphasia have poor to no understanding of spe...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE This article is a comprehensive review of aphasia treatment studies for the purpose of investigating the relationship between time postonset of aphasia and response to treatment for aphasia in chronic patients at >/=1 year after symptom onset. METHODS Studies that demonstrated treatment response (defined as a measurable change in task performance compared with a control...

BACKGROUND Constraint-induced aphasia therapy (CIAT) has been widely used in post-stroke aphasia rehabilitation. An increasing number of clinical controlled trials have investigated the efficacy of the CIAT for the post-stroke aphasia. PURPOSE To systematically review the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) concerning the effect of the CIAT in post-stroke patients with aphasia, and to identif...

Background Communication problems are a common sequela of cerebrovascular disease and other central nervous system disorders. Behavioral treatment of these disorders aims to harness uninjured parts of the brain to improve the communicative life of the individual. While pharmacotherapy has held promise for the treatment of aphasia for over 50 years, it has not fulfilled this promise. This articl...

Anomia is a frequent and persistent symptom of poststroke aphasia, resulting from damage to areas of the brain involved in language production. Cortical neuroplasticity plays a significant role in language recovery following stroke and can be facilitated by behavioral speech and language therapy. Recent research suggests that complementing therapy with neurostimulation techniques may enhance fu...

Positive outcomes from intensive therapy for individuals with aphasia have been reported in the literature. Little is known about the characteristics of individuals who attend intensive comprehensive aphasia programs (ICAPs) and what factors may predict who makes clinically significant changes when attending such programs. Demographic data on participants from 6 ICAPs showed that individuals wh...

Aphasia refers to a disorder of language processing caused by a dysfunction in specific brain regions. It is common after stroke and associated with relevant disability and higher mortality. Evaluation of language function (spontaneous speech, auditory comprehension, naming, repetition, reading and writing), allows classification of aphasia. Most patients present some degree of recovery. Speech...