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Purpose: To examine reductions in performance on auditory tasks by aphasic and neurologically intact individuals as a result of concomitant magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner noise. Method: Four tasks together forming a continuum of linguistic complexity were developed. They included complex-tone pitch discrimination, same-different discrimination of minimal pair syllables, lexical decision, and sentence plausibility. Each task was performed by persons with aphasia (PWA) and by controls. The stimuli were presented in silence and also in the noise recorded from within the bore of a 3 Tesla MRI scanner at 3 signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios. Results: Across the 4 tasks, the PWA scored lower than the controls, and performance fell as a function of decreased S/N. However, the rate at which performance fell was not different across the 2 listener groups in any task. Conclusions: Depending on the relative levels of the signals and noise, the intense noise accompanying MRI scanning has the potential to severely disrupt performance. However, PWA are no more susceptible to the disruptive influence of this noise than are unimpaired individuals usually employed as controls. Thus, functional MRI data from aphasic and control individuals may be interpreted without complications associated with large interactions between scanner noise and performance reduction.

Although the role of working memory in sentence comprehension has received substantial attention, the nature of this relationship remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the interaction between general, nonverbal working memory (WM) and sentence parsing (SP) in normal English-speaking adults. Accuracy and reaction times were recorded for thirty-one young adults during three on-line tasks: nonverbal WM, SP plausibility, and lexical decision (LD). A significant positive correlation was observed between reaction times for WM and SP, but not between LD and SP. These results suggest that SP may be supported by a general WM capacity, and therefore, some sentence comprehension difficulties observed in the clinical population may potentially be related to impairment in general WM. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

Studies examining the auditory abilities of persons with aphasia typically employ novel auditory tasks and assess performance based upon means across the testing session. However, it is not clear that [...]

Background: Despite the importance of written healthcare information in improving an individual's health status, patients may not be able to sufficiently utilize available resources because of a disparity between the accessibility of online written materials and patients' ability to process that information. For individuals with impairments in written language comprehension, such as persons with aphasia, this disparity may be magnified. It is crucial that written health resources be cognitively accessible, accurate, and understandable for persons with aphasia. Aims: The aims of this study were to: (1) objectively measure the accessibility of current written educational materials for persons with aphasia and (2) examine the relationship between levels of readability, validity, and user-friendliness of materials accessed. Methods & Procedures: Aphasia-related webpages likely to be accessed during an Internet search were retrieved and analysed. These webpages were determined by selecting the first 10 search results generated from entering the terms: "aphasia", "aphasia treatment", and "aphasia help", into Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This method resulted in 30 website resources per search engine. For each webpage, readability was evaluated using the following readability formulae: Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (F-K), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, and FORCAST. Additionally, validity and user-friendliness were evaluated for each webpage using the following measures: Site, Publisher, Audience, Timeliness (SPAT) and Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM), respectively. Outcomes & Results: A significant disparity was found between the desired and current level of readability, validity, and user-friendliness of the written information provided within the top search results related to aphasia. Based on the readability formulae output the average reading grade level of 10th grade was well above the average 5th grade reading level recommended for written materials. A third of the websites were unacceptable using the SPAT's quality standards and overall user-friendliness was deemed poor with an average SAM score of 27.4 out of 52 total points. No relationship was found between the validity or user-friendliness of websites and their readability. Conclusions: These data clearly demonstrate inadequacies in written web-based information about aphasia across several measures and provide insight into how the presentation of this information can be improved to facilitate useful information dissemination. Highlighting these disparities is important for promoting increased consideration and improvement in the usefulness and accessibility of healthcare information for persons with aphasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strong tendency toward left hemisphere (LH) language dominance has been well established, as evidenced by the high prevalence of language impairment following sudden onset lesions in the LH. In the presence of progressive LH pathology, such as epilepsy, substantial deviations in language organization can occur. However, the question regarding whether reorganization involves both expressive and receptive language functions or only the one directly affected by the primary location of pathology has not been settled. Using Wada testing scores from 296 epilepsy patients and estimated rates of typical dominance in the normal population, we assessed the frequency with which left frontal and temporal pathology resulted in reorganization of only the expressive or receptive language function or both. The comparisons revealed: (1) a significantly higher prevalence of atypical organization (i.e., deviations from LH dominance) among the LH patients compared to normal population estimates and right hemisphere patients, and (2) that regardless of pathology location within the LH, the rates of atypical reorganization for both expressive and receptive language were essentially equal. These results constitute evidence that the two language functions are intimately yoked and that when disruption to the system results in reorganization, it usually yields functional changes throughout the system. (JINS, 2010, 17, 000–000) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]