Active clinical trials for "Anomia"

Adults who sustain brain damage due to stroke, traumatic injury or surgery may develop difficulty finding words. This study compares the effectiveness of two behavior-based programs to improve picture naming ability in these individuals.

Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability in the United States, and aphasia is common following a stroke to the left hemisphere of the brain. Aphasia therapy can improve aphasia recover; however, very little is known about how different patients respond to different types of treatments. The purpose of this study is to understand how the following factors influence an individual's response to aphasia treatment: 1) biographical factors (e.g., age, education, gender), 2) post-stroke cognitive/linguistic abilities and learning potential, and 3) the location and extent of post-stroke brain damage. We are also interested in understanding the kinds of treatment materials that should be emphasized in speech/language treatment. Overall, the goal of the current research is to inform the clinical management of post-stroke aphasia by identifying factors that can predict how an individual will respond to different treatment methods.

Many individuals have difficulty with word retrieval, also called anomia, following cerebrovascular accident (CVA). These difficulties impede effective communication in everyday conversations and can negatively impact the resumption of pre-injury activities. Even after rehabilitation specifically targeting these areas, many individuals report persistent difficulties with anomia. Additionally, most individuals report that these difficulties worsen when distracted, fatigued, or when attempting to divide attention between tasks. Given that everyday activities frequently require efficient communication when attention is divided (e.g., walking and talking), it is important to investigate viable interventions to improve these skills. Recovery from CVA and resumption of pre-injury activities is best supported by rehabilitation interventions that are functional and directly related to the tasks individuals aim to resume. For example, a therapy task requiring an individual to generate a grocery list and then go to a grocery store to acquire the items on the list has a greater impact on recovery for the underlying language and cognitive skills than a series of generic language and cognition tasks completed in a therapy room. In addition to this, interventions that incorporate dual-task practices tend to have better outcomes than more traditional single-task practices. The aim of this study is to compare the effectiveness of pairing word retrieval tasks with physical endurance tasks versus presenting them in isolation. Additionally, this study will investigate whether improvements in word retrieval and physical endurance generalize to the functional, everyday task of holding a conversation while walking. The researchers hypothesize that participants will perform better on word retrieval tasks after participating in dual language and physical tasks than after participating in language tasks presented in isolation.

Most of us take being able to communicate for granted. Anomia (word finding problems) after stroke can cause profound frustration and anxiety for patients and families. Some people recover; many don't. ~ 250,000 people in the UK have chronic speech and language problems post-stroke. This project will investigate how treatment for these people might be improved. The brain's speech areas can be stimulated using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The kit is simple; a battery powering electrodes placed on the scalp. Healthy people who had tDCS while naming pictures could find words quicker and their speech areas responded more efficiently. How it affects aphasic stroke patients' brain function is unknown.

iTALKBetter will provide an app-based therapy for people with word retrieval difficulties who have had a stroke. This study aims to test the therapy application for people with naming difficulties through a small scale randomized controlled trial.

The purpose of this study is to determine if non-invasive electrical brain stimulation can enhance the out of intensive language therapy in chronic aphasia

Aphasia is a devastating acquired language impairment mainly caused by stroke, in which anomia is a quintessential clinical feature. If speech-language therapy (SLT) has been shown to be effective for persons with aphasia, the relative efficiency of one SLT strategy over another remains a matter of debate. The influential relationship between language, executive functions and aphasia rehabilitation outcomes has been addressed in a number of studies, but only few of them have studied the effect of adding an executive training to linguistic therapies.The aim of this study is to measure the efficiency of a protocol combining anomia therapy and executive training on naming skills and discourse in post-stroke aphasic persons at the chronic stage