Center for Language and Brain team in Geneva
A numerous delegation of Center for Language and Brain members led by the head of the Lab attended the annual Science of Aphasia Conference 2017 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Yulia Akinina presented a poster «Verb and Sentence Test in Russian: a Showcase of Two People with Fluent Aphasia» with the results of the pilot experiment using a newly adapted “Verb and Sentence Test” in two patients. This test is an instrument of language deficit assessment in sentence processing, unique for Russian language. The experiment demonstrated tentative validity of the test: the two patients performed differently, depending on their aphasia type.
Svetlana Malyutina, together with Elise Oosterhuis who did an internship in the Lab in spring 2017, presented a poster "Targeting Interhemispheric Balance to Modulate Language Processing: A tDCS Study in Healthy Volunteers". The aim was to test the interhemispheric competition hypothesis: the right hemisphere hinders speech rehabilitation after stroke, hence suppressing its activity contributes to the speech function rehabilitation of the left hemisphere. The hypothesis was preliminary tested in the neurologically healthy group of volunteers using the transcranial direct current stimulation method.
Mariya Khudyakova introduced her research in a poster «Lexical Diversity in Different Types of Aphasia». The study aimed at comparing different lexical diversity measures in the speech of people with aphasia and neurologically healthy individuals. For material, the retellings of the short “Pear Stories” film were used. All the measures confirmed decreased lexical diversity in the speech of people with aphasia compared to healthy controls. Additionally, a measure that is the most sensitive to aphasia type was chosen.
Finally, the head of the Lab gave a talk «The Contribution of Corpus Callosum to Lateralization of the Resting State Language Network». The study focused on the role of corpus callosum in the interhemispheric asymmetry of language resting state networks in healthy controls and people with aphasia. The results confirmed that language networks are more active in the left hemisphere in healthy controls, and in the right hemisphere in people with aphasia: the left hemisphere damage causes recruitment of the right-hemisphere homologue structures. However, for the first time the connection between the language network lateralization and corpus callosum volume was demonstrated: the bigger the corpus callosum size, the more left-lateralized the network is.
The Lab hopes to present even more posters and talks next year!