The Application of fMRI to Study the Aphasic Response to Pictures and Videos Based Naming Treatment

Abstract

Approximately 18% of post stroke people will suffer from chronic aphasia Naming deficit is one of the common symptoms in aphasia Currently picture naming is usually employed as the training material for treatment of aphasia Nevertheless videos with motion may be more realistic and suitable than pictures Up to now there has been no comparison of the treatment effects for these two training materials Besides there is less longitudinal functional research on changes in brain-activated regions In the study language behavior tests as well as fMRI images of pre- post-training and follow-up were acquired for analysis and the clinical effects of activated regions were investigated After 3-month training with video-based teaching material App all subjects exhibited improvement in naming ability in the post-training language assessment However only younger subjects or subjects who had a longer training time improved their naming behavior in follow-up assessment which was conducted after three months without training with App In the longitudinal investigation of fMRI the activated regions shifted from right hemisphere to left hemisphere upon the stimulus of naming a photo demonstrating that the perilesional area in left hemisphere reorganized and regained solidity gradually after training Furthermore the effect was obvious in subjects with a longer training time The activated regions with the contrast of naming with a known photo versus naming with an unknown photo were similar in the follow-up imaging showing that the subjects had relearned the ability to name an initially unknown item In naming with video there were few activated regions in older subjects while younger subjects exhibited the aforementioned effect of activated regions shifting to the left hemisphere Video-based teaching materials may not be appropriate for older patients with aphasia In future it may be able to formulate different treatments for different patients with aphasia to achieve improved language recovery

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Kuo-Sheng Cheng (Supervisor)