Language Area of the Brain Helps Prognosticate Post-Stroke Rehabilitation

Recognizing the language or sound area of the brain impacted by stroke may help design targeted rehabilitation to specific regions as per a study at the Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, published in the journal Brain Communications. “One in five stroke survivors in the United States live with persistent language impairment. Most of these people also struggle with reading. Our study clarifies the neuroanatomical and cognitive bases of post-stroke reading and language deficits, which could help facilitate predictions of deficits in stroke survivors and suggest targeted treatments,” says the study’s first author, J. Vivian Dickens, Ph.D., and a Georgetown University MD/Ph.D. student at Georgetown’s Medical Center.

The study focussed on the phonological processing, which is, the understanding and being able to use the sounds that comprise language. One of the frequent language impairment seen post-stroke is having trouble in sounding out words.

Stroke and Targeted Rehabilitation

The team analyzed 67 people for reading and phonological abilities. Among them, 30 had a stroke and 37 did not have. The white matter connections (nerve fibers that connect different regions of the brains) of the participants were then tracked using advanced MRI techniques.

“We found two different patterns of reading problems. Strokes involving the left frontal lobe caused problems with motor phonology and one of the two ways of reading, specifically sounding out words. In contrast, strokes involving the left temporal and parietal lobes caused problems with auditory-motor translation and both ways of reading. These results may help clinicians develop therapies focused on specific reading problems that individual stroke survivors often struggle with,” says Dickens.

The study thereby serves as an important step in revealing the mechanisms of sound, for better rehabilitative therapies.

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Source-Medindia