Scientists trying new approaches to determine cause of aphasia

The U.S. government's National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, offers this synopsis of how researchers are attempting to uncover what causes aphasia:

In general, treatment strives to improve a person's ability to communicate. The most effective treatment begins early in the recovery process and is maintained consistently over time. Major factors that influence the amount of improvement include the cause of the brain damage, the area of the brain that was damaged, the extent of the injury, and the person's general health.

Usually, a speech-language pathologist works with other rehabilitation and medical professionals, such as physicians, nurses, neuropsychologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and social workers, as well as families, to provide a comprehensive evaluation and treatment plan for the person with aphasia.

Scientists are attempting to understand how injury to a particular brain structure impairs specific portions of a person's language process. Other research is attempting to develop a model of sentence comprehension and production that can help provide a functional explanation for aphasia symptoms. These studies look at how difficulties in word representations and processes contribute to problems with sentence production and comprehension so that specific symptoms can be traced back to identifiable processing deficits. This would help focus treatment on the responsible word processes or representations.

Since the same types of aphasia look different from one language to another, some scientists are attempting to distinguish between universal symptoms of the disorder and those that are language specific. Others are examining how people with aphasia maintain their knowledge of a language but seem to have difficulty accessing that knowledge.

New therapeutic approaches

Pharmacotherapy is a new, experimental approach to treating aphasia. Some studies are testing how drugs can be used in combination with speech therapy to improve recovery of various language functions by increasing the task-related flow of activation in the left hemisphere of the brain. These studies indicate that drugs may help improve aphasia in acute stroke and as an adjuvant to language therapy in postacute and chronic aphasia.

Other treatment approaches use computers to improve the language abilities of people with aphasia.

To understand recovery processes in the brain, some researchers are attempting to use functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to uncover the anatomical organization of the human brain regions involved in comprehending words and sentences. This type of research may improve understanding of how these areas reorganize after focal brain injury. The results could have implications for both the basic understanding of brain function and the diagnosis and treatment of neurological diseases.