Active clinical trials for "Anomia"

The main aim of the study is to investigate the effect of a novel, speeded anomia therapy (Conroy et al., 2018) in a large population of patients with chronic post-stroke aphasia. The treatment will be delivered via a web application (QuickWord).

A debilitating and common symptom in Gulf War Illnesses (GWI) is the inability to retrieve words. This affects one's conversations, ability to fluidly exchange information verbally and retrieve information from memory. The investigators have discovered 3 brain regions - the PreSupplementary Motor Area (preSMA), caudate nucleus, and the thalamus - that are essential for word retrieval. They have also detected abnormal EEG signals related to these regions in GWI patients who have problems retrieving words. The investigators have used their model of verbal retrieval to design a noninvasive, nonpharmacological treatment that uses High Definition transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD tDCS). Using HD tDCS, they deliver small amounts of electric current to areas of the head to stimulate specific brain regions. The objective is to determine if delivery of HD tDCS over the preSMA will improve performance in GWI veterans with a verbal retrieval deficit. The investigators will administer pre-treatment tests of verbal retrieval measures while recording brain electrical activity. They will then administer 10 sessions of HD tDCS over the preSMA (20 minutes a session) in half the veterans. The other half will go through the same procedures, except the current will not be turned on (called the sham condition). The investigators will then compare performance between the "active" and sham group and assess if the treatment had a significant effect on performing verbal retrieval tasks and if there is a change in the ERP markers to account for how the treatment worked. If the treatment is found to be effective it will be offered to those in the sham group at the study's end. The investigators predict this treatment regimen will lead to positive effects on a person's daily functions, especially improved conversational abilities, with few, if any, side effects. They hope to outline the standard procedures for physicians to perform the treatment by creating a manual on how to apply the treatment in a clinical setting so that it will be quickly available to use in multiple sites if the proposed study demonstrates that it is efficacious. This treatment can be made widely available for Warrior Transition Units, military clinics, and VA medical centers. In addition, if successful, this could potentially lead to development of other targets of stimulation to improve other cognitive deficits in GWI, and help alleviate verbal fluency deficits associated with other disorders.

Aphasia is an acquired deficit following acute damage to the central nervous system that involves the difficulty or impossibility of understanding and formulating language. A typical disorder of non-fluent forms of aphasia is anomia. Anomia refers to the difficulty in finding words, in particular when trying to name objects and actions. According to the Embodied Cognition approach (EC), language is tightly connected to the motor system. In this view, language rehabilitation programs should stimulate language through the activation of the motor system. In this approach, since anomic deficits are often due to a weak link between the meaning of the word and its lemma, the Hebbs' principles of coincident and correlated learning can be exploited, i.e., by intensifying the synchronous activation of lexicon and semantics and connecting them with the motor counterpart. In this study, the investigators present an innovative training, based on the EC framework, in which they will make use of new technologies for anomia rehabilitation in post-stroke patients. Specifically, the researchers will use immersive 360° videos representing everyday actions displayed from the first-person point of view, experienced through a head-mounted display. The training will be administered 3 times a week for 4 weeks. The control group will watch standard videos representing the same actions recorded from the third-person perspective. Naming abilities will be tested before and after the training together with other cognitive and psychological measures. The investigators expect that the group who will undergo the 360° video-based training will show greater improvement of performance compared to the control group.

The focus of the study is to identify children with word-finding difficulty and other speech and communication difficulties such as stuttering, a procedure referred to as screening. Ideally, investigators want to screen all children in the reception classes in the schools with which investigators work. The procedures were designed so that they work with children who speak English or those whose first language is not English. A second aim concerns what teachers can do when a child does not pass the screen. Investigators have developed a type of treatment designed for children who have either word-finding difficulty or fluency difficulty. This project concerns the intervention for children with word-finding difficulty. The treatment is conducted in a quiet room with pairs of children. The children with word-finding difficulty in each group are assessed individually for about 10 min before the treatment starts to establish a baseline for assessing improvement using a standardized task that tests for word-finding difficulty. A recording is taken, similar to that investigators obtained at the screening phase. The training takes place over three weeks (one session a week of 20-30 minutes' duration). Word-finding difficulty and fluency are reassessed at the end of the three-week period and at follow-up one week later.

The purpose of the study is to test whether low level electric stimulation, called transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), on the part of the brain (i.e., pre-supplementary motor area) thought to aid in memory will improve verbal retrieval in civilian (non-military, non-veteran) participants with histories of traumatic brain injuries. The primary outcome measures are neuropsychological assessments of verbal retrieval, and the secondary measures are neuropsychological assessments of other cognitive abilities and electroencephalography (EEG) measures. Additionally, the study will examine the degree to which baseline assessments of cognition, concussion history, structural brain imaging, and EEG predict responses to treatment over time, both on assessments administered within the intervention period and at follow-up.

Aphasia is a language disorder, commonly resulting from stroke or other brain injury, that impacts a person's ability to communicate. This project is looking to improve upon current treatment methods for spoken naming in people with aphasia. People with aphasia frequently report being able to successfully say a word in their head, regardless of their ability to say the word out loud. For example, when presented with a picture of a house, they may report being able to think or hear "house" in their head, even if they can't name it out loud. This "little voice" inside one's head is known as inner speech (IS). Previous research suggests that some people with aphasia can re-learn to say words with successful IS (i.e., words they can already say in their heads) easier and faster than words with unsuccessful IS. This study will extend these findings by implementing a comparative treatment study in a larger group of participants with aphasia. The results will help to establish recommendations for speech-language pathologists in choosing treatment stimuli for anomia.

The goal of this study is to remediate word-finding problems in patients who have Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) or Alzheimer's Disease and to delay the further progression of word-finding impairment. The current approach is novel in that it contains a prophylaxis component in which the investigators attempt to strengthen neural connections that remain functional, making them more resistant to degradation as the disease progresses. While the study is specific in its targeting of word-finding problems, a successful outcome would bode well for other studies aimed at prevention or reversal of declining cognitive functions in dementia. One set of participants with PPA will receive practice with picture naming in two conditions: viewing the picture and repeating the name; and viewing the picture with its written name, plus reading and writing the name. Another set of participants with PPA or Alzheimer's Disease will be trained in two different conditions: learning about the word's semantic features (meaning); and learning about the word's lexical features (letters and sounds). Naming of pictures trained in each of these conditions will be compared, at three time intervals post-training, with naming of pictures tested before the study but never trained. It is predicted that the pairing of the picture with its written name, combined with the motor task of writing the name, will result in a greater ability to name the picture at a later date than simple practice viewing the picture and repeating the name. Furthermore, it is predicted that participants who have difficulty understanding concepts will be more likely to respond to semantic treatment, while participants who have difficulty connecting words with concepts will be more likely to respond to lexical treatment.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of treatment for specific language deficits in people with aphasia. In addition to language and cognitive measures, changes in brain function will also be gathered before and after the treatment is administered in order to track any changes resulting from receiving treatment.

Every year thousands of persons suffer from brain damage resulting in anomia, that is, word finding difficulties affecting their ability to talk to other people. Anomia may be a result of stroke or of progressive neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis (MS). Word retrieval is dependent on a complex system of different neural networks and to name objects and activities can be affected to different degrees. The present project explores different aspects of naming ability in altogether 90 persons that has anomia related to stroke or to Parkinson's disease or MS. Furthermore, the communicative strategies and resources used by conversation partners in everyday conversational interaction and in care situations, affected by anomia are studied. Finally, the project includes a study of the effectiveness of a word finding training program based on stimulation of semantic and phonological networks in the brain, involved in the production of words. There is a lack of research on effects on communication from anomia in Parkinson's disease and MS and there is no research on anomia that investigates both object and action naming using a material adapted to the Swedish language. In the project quantitative and qualitative methods are used to explore and describe how persons with different neurogenic communication disorders can use different resources and communicative strategies to express themselves.

The aim of the study is to observe the effects of speech therapy and transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy in patients who develop anomic aphasia after stroke. Patients meeting the inclusion criteria will be randomly divided into groups. In the repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment group, a total of 10 sessions, 1 session per day, will be applied to the right inferior frontal gyrus area with a frequency of 1 Hz for 20 minutes. The control group patients will be given speech therapy in the same way, but no active magnetic stimulation will be given in rTMS sessions (sham application). Speech therapy will be given to each patient by the same physiotherapist, and the treatment will last a total of 10 days, 60 minutes a day. Minimental test (MMT), Ege aphasia test, aphasia quality of life scale (SAQOL-39) will be filled in to the patients before and after the treatment.