Aphasia Research Laboratory

Director, Swathi Kiran, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

The primary goal of our research is to further our understanding of the effects of brain damage over communication. In particular, we are interested in language processing and language recovery mechanisms in normal individuals and patients with brain damage. We combine online reaction time experiments and offline paper/pencil tasks to investigate various aspects of lexical semantic processing (words and their meanings) in normal individuals and individuals with aphasia.

Additionally, a major focus of our research is to develop treatment methods to alleviate language deficits. Through theoretically motivated treatment experiments, we hope to demonstrate that following brain damage, language recovery can take place in a predictable manner, and can be far more efficient than traditional didactic approaches.

The following are some of the goals of our research:

• Treatment methods for naming, reading and writing deficits in aphasia.
• Online experiments of lexical (word) access and semantic processing.
• Understanding the various factors that influence word and word meaning access.
• Using neuroimaging as a tool to identify changes in brain activation as a function of treatment.

The following are some of the completed projects in the lab:

• Effect of semantic complexity on naming treatment in aphasia.
• A model based approach to improving reading, writing and naming deficits in aphasia.
• Effect of typicality on online category verification in normal individuals and in aphasia.

The following are some of the ongoing projects in the lab:

• Training writing to dictation to improve oral naming, spelling and written naming in aphasia.
• Effect of typicality on naming latencies in normal individuals and in aphasia.
• Effect of typicality in adhoc categories on online category verification in normal individuals and in aphasia.