Research interests:
- Spoken discourse in aphasia, especially its clinical utility, and the scientific rigor with which we use it; co-founder of FOQUSAphasia (www.foqusaphasia.com)
- Gesture and its relationship with language and communication in persons with brain injury, specifically aphasia and moderate and severe traumatic brain injury
- Neuroimaging (MRI) and neuropsychological characterization of language and cognition in typical aging and after brain injury (e.g. stroke, traumatic brain injury), with a specialty in aphasia
Presently, I am interested in modeling and predicting language reorganization and recovery in acquired adult language disorders and in older adults using structural and functional brain markers acquired from MRI.
Finally, I am very interested in manual gesture's relationship with language and communication with brain injury.
Expertise: Cognitive neuroscience; aphasia; neuroimaging; neuroscience of language; cognitive psychology; discourse/narrative; multimodal communication, especially gesture.
We are interested in understanding language organization in the brain. We focus our research in older adults and adults with neurogenic communication disorders (e.g. aphasia). We ask questions like:
- In the wake of later life trauma like stroke, how does the brain support language and cognitive skills?
- How can brain health (like white matter integrity) contribute to language ability post-stroke, and how does brain health in typical aging contribute to language ability?
- How does our ability to communicate, especially through spoken language, change after aphasia? How does this affect psychosocial and cognitive skills?
Current Research Projects
- Co-speech gesture usage across tasks in persons with and without aphasia
- Intelligibility of speech from speakers with aphasia
- Test-retest reliability of spoken discourse in aphasia
- Brain-behavior relationships in speakers with and without aphasia
- Neural correlates of language decline in frontotemporal dementia primary progressive aphasia
- Personal networks of care givers
Our specific area of interest is the organization of language in the brain.
We evaluate ‘language’ (a very wide topic!) in a variety of ways, specializing in:
- Inner speech
- Discourse production
- Co-speech gesture
- Cognitive-linguistic tasks (e.g. executive function, attention, working memory)
- Errors of morphology and grammar as well as single-word errors
Interests: Neuroimaging of language and language recovery; spoken discourse in aphasia ; inner speech in aphasia; gesture and its role in language and communication in aphasia and traumatic brain injury;
Skills and Expertise:
- Language Disorders
- Speech and Language Processing
- Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- fMRI
- Language
- Neuroimaging
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Brain Connectivity
- Cognitive Linguistics
Research interests
- Evaluation of language and cognition in typical aging and after brain injury (e.g. stroke, traumatic brain injury), with a specialty in aphasia
- Understanding brain structure and function underlying language in aphasia and in typical aging through the use of MRI (e.g. fMRI, DTI/DWI/DKI, lesion analysis)
- Evaluating and improving upon the psychometric properties and outcomes of connected speech / spoken discourse – in aphasia
Research Interests: connected speech / spoken discourse; gesture and its relationship with language and communication in brain injury; language, especially language production, after brain injury and in typical aging; neural mechanisms of language; relationship of language ability with higher cognition
Research Interests
- neural organization of speech and language in older adults and adults with acquired neurogenic communication disorders; stroke aphasia; aphasia rehabilitation
Subject Areas
- Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences
