Multi-timescale processing of speech through cortical oscillations in health and in aphasic stroke

Aphasia is a communication and language disorder that affects a majority of stroke victims and that affects work, family life and everyday tasks. Rehabilitation from aphasic stroke is costly and yields mixed results. This project aims to develop a novel assessment of aphasia that can guide clinical treatment. This will use progress, including from my own group, on the multi-timescale neural oscillations in the cerebral cortex that track critical multi-timescale features of speech. I hypothesise that this neural mechanism for processing speech is impaired in aphasia.

I will investigate this hypothesis using EEG recordings of cortical responses to speech in health as well as in aphasic stroke. My goals are to investigate how cortical oscillations in response to speech differ in healthy people and in patients with aphasic stroke and how they recover during rehabilitation training from aphasic stroke. I will also examine how this can be used to stratify patients with aphasic stroke according to benefit from therapy.

This study will yield pilot data that will define scope and size of a larger systematic investigation.