Researchers at Georgetown University, studying people's ability to pronounce words after a stroke, have found that knowing which area of \u200b\u200bthe brain is affected by a stroke can have important implications for helping targeted rehabilitation efforts.. The discovery appeared on August 30, 2021 in Brain Communications Magazine.

“One in five stroke survivors in the United States live with permanent speech impairment.. Most of these people also struggle with reading, ”says study first author J.. Vivian Dickens, Ph.D., a Georgetown University School of Medicine student conducting research at the University's Cognitive Recovery Laboratory and Center for Aphasia Research and Rehabilitation at Georgetown Medical Center. "

The main focus of the study was on phonological processing, which is the understanding and ability to use the sounds that make up a language.. This processing has three main aspects: auditory, or the ability to recognize the sounds of words, for example, to determine if words rhyme.; motor, which is the ability to produce precise and clear speech; and auditory-motor translation, which is the translation of heard sounds into speech.

“The aim of this study was to understand how post-stroke difficulties with three different aspects of phonology are related to reading difficulties,” says Dickens.. “There are two broad ways people read words: one involves speaking words, which is especially important for reading new words.; the other involves full-word recognition. People with speech impairments after a stroke often have certain problems with the pronunciation of words. "

Researchers tested reading and phonological abilities in 67 people, 30 of whom had a stroke and 37 did not.. Advanced MRI techniques have allowed researchers to trace connections in white matter that are similar to electrical circuits in the brain, as well as map the locations of the stroke in the brains of affected study participants..

“We found two different models of reading problems. Strokes involving the left frontal lobe caused problems with motor phonology and one of two ways of reading, specifically speaking words. In contrast, strokes involving the left temporal and parietal lobes caused problems with auditory-motor translation and both ways of reading, ”says Dickens.. "

“This study focused on reading aloud single words, a classic measure of reading ability,” says Peter E.. Turkeltaub, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Cognitive Recovery Laboratory at the Brain Plasticity and Recovery Center, Medical Director of the Aphasia Research and Rehabilitation Center and senior author of the article. “Our findings represent an important step forward in uncovering the mechanisms of translation of print to sound, which is critical for the development of rehabilitation therapies for stroke patients.”.

The researchers are planning research to help confirm the extent to which these results can be generalized to silent reading, based on the same basic psychological processes as oral reading, and more important for reading in daily life.. Researchers also hope to turn their research objectives into useful clinical tests for diagnosing phonological processing..

Besides Dickens and Turkeltaub, the authors of the manuscript at Georgetown are Andrew T.. DeMarco, Candice M. van der Stealth, Sarah F. Snyder, Elizabeth X. Lacey and Rhonda B. Friedman. John D. Medal associated with Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania, both in Philadelphia.

med-heal. ru.