PURPOSE To review literature specific to the use of AAC with adults who have severe aphasia. METHOD The authors reviewed studies involving AAC interventions for adults with severe aphasia. RESULTS Published data support the use of aided and unaided AAC with adults with severe aphasia in controlled treatment contexts. Reported gains in communication typically have not generalized to everyday...

We have hypothesized that most cases of aphasia or hemispatial neglect due to acute, subcortical infarct can be accounted for by concurrent cortical hypoperfusion. To test this hypothesis, we demonstrate: (i) that pure subcortical infarctions are associated with cortical hypoperfusion in subjects with aphasia/neglect; (ii) that reversal of cortical hypoperfusion is associated with resolution of...

Acute aphasia is rare in multiple sclerosis. We describe 3 patients with multiple sclerosis who had acute exacerbations presenting as aphasias. One patient had a mixed transcortical aphasia, 1 had a transcortical motor aphasia, and 1 had a Broca aphasia. Magnetic resonance imaging scans of the brain with contrast enhancement revealed new white matter lesions in the left hemisphere in all 3 pati...

Topographical evaluation of aphasic brain lesions can enhance our knowledge of cognitive physiology and plasticity. This prospective study was conducted on 100 stroke-afflicted patients with aphasia admitted in Valie-Asr Hospital (Khorasan, Iran) in 2003. Topography of infarct lesions was detected by a neurologist based on the map of brain vascular territories in CT-scan. Aphasic lesions catego...

Most naming treatments in aphasia either assume a phonological or semantic emphasis or a combination thereof. However, it is unclear whether semantic or phonological treatments recruit the same or different cortical areas in chronic aphasia. Employing three persons with aphasia, two of whom were non-fluent, the present study compared changes in neural recruitment associated with phonologic and ...

PURPOSE The Kentucky Aphasia Test (KAT) is an objective measure of language functioning for persons with aphasia. This article describes materials, administration, and scoring of the KAT; presents the rationale for development of test items; reports information from a pilot study; and discusses the role of the KAT in aphasia assessment. METHOD The KAT has 3 parallel test batteries, KAT-1, KAT...

Little is known about the processing of non-verbal sounds in the primary progressive aphasias. Here, we investigated the processing of complex non-verbal sounds in detail, in a consecutive series of 20 patients with primary progressive aphasia [12 with progressive non-fluent aphasia; eight with semantic dementia]. We designed a novel experimental neuropsychological battery to probe complex soun...

a bearing on graphic aphasia, or, as it is more correctly designated, agraphia. Agraphia has been known for many years to be a frequent symptom in all the types of aphasia, but the question as to whether there was a type of aphasia which could be strictly called graphic aphasia without any other lesion is one that has been much discussed in recent years. In order to bring the subject properly b...

Aphasia centers are in an excellent position to contribute to the broad definition of health by the World Health Organization: the ability to live life to its full potential. An expansion of this definition by the World Health Organization International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) forms the basis for a user-friendly and ICF-compatible framework for planning interv...

Aphasia as a multifaceted language disorder associated with the complicated links between language and brain has been and is of interest and significance to the stream of research in different disciplines including neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive studies and language acquisition. Along with explorations into the manifestations of aphasia in monolingual speakers, bilingual aphasia...