Georgetown University researchers, looking at the ability of people to sound out words after a stroke, found that knowing which region of the brain was impacted by the stroke could have important implications for helping target rehabilitation efforts.
“One in five stroke survivors in the United States live with persistent language impairment. Most of these people also struggle with reading,” says the study’s first author, J. Vivian Dickens, PhD, a Georgetown University MD/PhD student conducting research in the university’s Cognitive Recovery Lab and Center for Aphasia Research and Rehabilitation at Georgetown’s Medical Center. “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.”
The research focus was on phonological processing, which is understanding and being able to use the sounds that comprise language. There are three principal aspects to this processing: auditory, or the ability to recognize the sounds of words, such as judging if words rhyme; motor, which is the ability to produce accurate and clear speech; and auditory-motor translation, which is the translation of sounds heard into speech.
“The goal of this study was to understand how post-stroke difficulties with the three different aspects of phonology relate to difficulties with reading,” says Dickens. “There are two broad ways that people read words: one involves sounding out words, which is particularly important for reading new words; the other involves whole-word recognition. People with post-stroke language impairment frequently have specific trouble sounding out words.”
