Neural correlates of phonological and semantic-based anomia treatment in aphasia

Abstract

Most naming treatments in aphasia either assume a phonological or semantic emphasis or a combination thereof. However, it is unclear whether semantic or phonological treatments recruit the same or different cortical areas in chronic aphasia. Employing three persons with aphasia, two of whom were non-fluent, the present study compared changes in neural recruitment associated with phonologic and semantic-based naming treatments. The participants with non-fluent aphasia were able to name more items following both treatment approaches. Although this was not the case for the participant who had fluent aphasia, her naming errors decreased considerably following treatment. Post-treatment fMRI revealed similar changes in neural activity bilaterally in the precuneus among the two non-fluent participants--increased activity was noted in the right entorhinal cortex and posterior thalamus on post-treatment scans for the third participant. These findings imply that cortical areas not traditionally related to language processing may support anomia recovery in some patients with chronic aphasia.

Neural changes after phonological treatment for anomia: An fMRI study

“…These included changes in the left temporal and the right posterior inferior parietal areas (Patient 1); and the frontal poles, the anterior cingulate gyrus and the left posterior supramarginal gyrus (Patient 3). In a second study, Fridriksson et al (2007) found increased activity bilaterally in the precuneus in two nonfluent patients who responded well to a combined semantic-phonological approach to naming treatment. Meinzer and colleagues (Meinzer, Obleser, Flaisch, Eulitz, & Rockstroh, 2007;Meinzer et al, 2006;Meinzer et al, 2008) have conducted both fMRI and MEG studies to investigate neuroplastic changes on naming abilities after Constraint-Induced Aphasia Therapy (CIAT).…”

“…In summary, studies that have investigated the neural underpinnings of recovery following naming therapy in particular, have generally found activation post-therapy in areas that have been linked to semantic and/or phonological processing in healthy participants, with the exception of Fridriksson et al (2007) who also found post-treatment changes in areas not typically associated with language processing. In addition, some have reported increased LH compared to RH activation after therapy (Cornelissen et al, 2003;Meinzer et al, 2004;Meinzer et al, 2007); others have found increased RH activation after therapy (Meinzer et al, 2006;Peck et al, 2004); while still others have reported bilateral activation after therapy (Fridriksson et al, 2006;Léger et al, 2002;Meinzer et al, 2007).…”

“…The patient demonstrated improvements in both single word naming and noun production in connected speech after therapy, and fMRI showed increased activation of the left inferior frontal cortex and the right inferior posterior temporal cortex after therapy. Fridriksson and colleagues (Fridriksson, Morrow-Odom, Moser, Fridriksson, & Baylis, 2006;Fridriksson et al, 2007) have conducted two studies. In one (Fridriksson et al, 2006), three participants underwent three fMRI sessions both before and after therapy.…”

Early Aphasia Rehabilitation Is Associated With Functional Reactivation of the Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus

“…Furthermore, some studies clearly addressing the functional correlates of language rehabilitation, particularly anomia, performed on chronic patients found LH, 10 bilateral, 9,28 or RH 29 activation. It is worth noting that functional MRI (fMRI) studies using different tasks 8,19,20,24,30,31 also found variable activation patterns within the language-related areas (see Thompson and den Ouden 31 for a review), suggesting that the whole network could be consistently activated by different language modalities.…”

“…Most studies focused on the spontaneous recovery of language, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] but only a few, often single case descriptions, focused on patients submitted to language rehabilitation. [8][9][10][11][12][13] All of these were conducted on chronic patients. The rate of complete spontaneous (ie, without language therapy) aphasia recovery poststroke has been estimated at ≈33% in the first month, 43% after 4 months, and 50% 12 months later.…”