Our Focus

Our research focuses on how language is processed in the healthy brain; how language is altered as a result of stroke or neurodegenerative disease; and how the brain recovers language functions -- with or without therapy -- in the months and years following injury.

Specific areas of focus include:

• Gaining a better understanding of acquired disorders of language (aphasia), reading (alexia), and word finding (anomia);

• Devising and testing treatments for alexia and anomia based upon cognitive models of language;

• Gaining insight into the neural mechanisms of language recovery;

• Studying the progressive decline of language, reading, and semantic memory in primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer’s dementia;

• Investigating different learning paradigms that may be efficacious in recovering and maintaining language functions following brain injury.

Techniques employed include behavioral assessments, cognitive treatment studies, functional magnetic imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and eye-tracking.