scholarly journals Auditory Comprehension Deficits in Post-stroke Aphasia: Neurologic and Demographic Correlates of Outcome and Recovery

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy J. Lwi ◽  
Timothy J. Herron ◽  
Brian C. Curran ◽  
Maria V. Ivanova ◽  
Krista Schendel ◽  
...  

Introduction: One of the most challenging symptoms of aphasia is an impairment in auditory comprehension. The inability to understand others has a direct impact on a person's quality of life and ability to benefit from treatment. Despite its importance, limited research has examined the recovery pattern of auditory comprehension and instead has focused on aphasia recovery more generally. Thus, little is known about the time frame for auditory comprehension recovery following stroke, and whether specific neurologic and demographic variables contribute to recovery and outcome.Methods: This study included 168 left hemisphere chronic stroke patients stroke patients with auditory comprehension impairments ranging from mild to severe. Univariate and multivariate lesion-symptom mapping (LSM) was used to identify brain regions associated with auditory comprehension outcomes on three different tasks: Single-word comprehension, yes/no sentence comprehension, and comprehension of sequential commands. Demographic variables (age, gender, and education) were also examined for their role in these outcomes. In a subset of patients who completed language testing at two or more time points, we also analyzed the trajectory of recovery in auditory comprehension using survival curve-based time compression.Results: LSM analyses revealed that poor single-word auditory comprehension was associated with lesions involving the left mid- to posterior middle temporal gyrus, and portions of the angular and inferior-middle occipital gyri. Poor yes/no sentence comprehension was associated almost exclusively with the left mid-posterior middle temporal gyrus. Poor comprehension of sequential commands was associated with lesions in the left posterior middle temporal gyrus. There was a small region of convergence between the three comprehension tasks, in the very posterior portion of the left middle temporal gyrus. The recovery analysis revealed that auditory comprehension scores continued to improve beyond the first year post-stroke. Higher education was associated with better outcome on all auditory comprehension tasks. Age and gender were not associated with outcome or recovery slopes.Conclusions: The current findings suggest a critical role for the posterior left middle temporal gyrus in the recovery of auditory comprehension following stroke, and that spontaneous recovery of auditory comprehension can continue well beyond the first year post-stroke.

1993 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. M. Mazoyer ◽  
N. Tzourio ◽  
V. Frak ◽  
A. Syrota ◽  
N. Murayama ◽  
...  

In this study, we compare regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) while French monolingual subjects listen to continuous speech in an unknown language, to lists of French words, or to meaningful and distorted stories in French. Our results show that, in addition to regions devoted to single-word comprehension, processing of meaningful stories activates the left middle temporal gyrus, the left and right temporal poles, and a superior prefrontal area in the left frontal lobe. Among these regions, only the temporal poles remain activated whenever sentences with acceptable syntax and prosody are presented.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunhai Tu ◽  
Pingping Huang ◽  
Chuanwan Mao ◽  
Xiaozheng Liu ◽  
Jianlu Gao

[Objective] Functional connectivity density (FCD) mapping was used to investigate abnormalities and factors related to brain functional connectivity (F.C.) in cortical regions of patients with dysthyroid optic neuropathy (DON) and to analyze the pathogenesis of DON further. [Methods] Patients diagnosed with thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO) in the Eye Hospital were enrolled. All patients underwent comprehensive eye examinations and best-corrected visual acuity, visual field(V.F.) test. MRI data collection and analysis were completed in the 2nd Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University. The patients were divided into two groups: the DON group, with an average visual field, mean deviation (M.D.) of both eyes < -5 dB, and the non-DON group (nDON group), with an average visual field M.D. of both eyes ≥ -2 dB. [Results] A total of 30 TAO patients (14 men, 16 women) with complete data who met the experimental requirements were enrolled. The average age was 48.79 (40~ 57) years. There were 16 patients in the DON group and 14 patients in the nDON group. No significant differences in age, gender, education level, and the maximum horizontal diameter of either medial rectus muscle were found between the two groups. The difference of brain FCD between the two groups showed significant abnormal connectivity in the right orbital gyri of the frontal lobe (Frontal_Inf_Orb_R) and the left precuneus in the DON group compared with the nDON group. As demonstrated by decreased FCD values in the right inferior frontal gyrus/orbital part, the relevant brain regions were the left middle temporal gyrus, left precuneus, left middle frontal gyrus, right postcentral gyrus, and brain gyri (excluding the supramarginal gyrus and angular gyrus) below the left parietal bone. The FCD associated with the left precuneus was increased, and the relevant brain areas were the left middle temporal gyrus, right cuneus, superior occipital gyrus, and right fusiform gyrus. A significant correlation was identified between the MD. of the binocular visual field and brain FCD. [Conclusion] The abnormal FCD in the cortex of DON patients suggests that a central nervous system mechanism may be related to the pathogenesis of the DON.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 2434-2445
Author(s):  
Pei Wei Shan ◽  
Wei Liu ◽  
Caixing Liu ◽  
Yunyi Han ◽  
Lina Wang ◽  
...  

Objective Functional connectivity (FC) is altered in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Most previous studies have focused on the strength of FC in patients with OCD; few have examined the number of functional connections in these patients. The number of functional connections is an important index for assessing aberrant FC. In the present study, we used FC density (FCD) mapping to explore alterations in the number of functional connections in patients with treatment-refractory OCD (TROCD) using the FCD index. Methods Twenty patients with TROCD and 20 patients with OCD in clinical remission were enrolled in the study. Global FCD (gFCD) was adopted to compare the differences between the two groups of patients. Results The gFCD in the left middle temporal gyrus was lower in the patients with TROCD than in those with remitted OCD, suggesting that decreased information processing ability may play a significant role in TROCD. Conclusion The left middle temporal gyrus is a key component of the emotional processing circuit and attentional processing circuit. Decreased information processing ability in this brain region may play a significant role in TROCD; however, further well-designed follow-up studies are needed to support this hypothesis.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Gavin M. Bidelman ◽  
Claire Pearson ◽  
Ashleigh Harrison

Categorical judgments of otherwise identical phonemes are biased toward hearing words (i.e., “Ganong effect”) suggesting lexical context influences perception of even basic speech primitives. Lexical biasing could manifest via late stage postperceptual mechanisms related to decision or, alternatively, top–down linguistic inference that acts on early perceptual coding. Here, we exploited the temporal sensitivity of EEG to resolve the spatiotemporal dynamics of these context-related influences on speech categorization. Listeners rapidly classified sounds from a /gɪ/-/kɪ/ gradient presented in opposing word–nonword contexts ( GIFT–kift vs. giss–KISS), designed to bias perception toward lexical items. Phonetic perception shifted toward the direction of words, establishing a robust Ganong effect behaviorally. ERPs revealed a neural analog of lexical biasing emerging within ~200 msec. Source analyses uncovered a distributed neural network supporting the Ganong including middle temporal gyrus, inferior parietal lobe, and middle frontal cortex. Yet, among Ganong-sensitive regions, only left middle temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobe predicted behavioral susceptibility to lexical influence. Our findings confirm lexical status rapidly constrains sublexical categorical representations for speech within several hundred milliseconds but likely does so outside the purview of canonical auditory-sensory brain areas.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven M. Frankland ◽  
Joshua D. Greene

AbstractNatural language is notable amongst representational systems for the rich internal structure of phrase and sentence-level expressions. Here, we provide evidence from two fMRI studies that a region of the left Middle Temporal Gyrus (MTG) exhibits a surprising representational asymmetry: verbs and patients (to whom was it done?) are bound to form a representation, but verbs and agents (who did it?) are not. Within MTG, BOLD signal to novel combinations of familiar components can be modeled by combining learned verb-patient conjunctive representations with more general agent representations, but not by the converse (verb-agent + patient). This asymmetry is not predicted by an abstract propositional representation of the event (e.g., chased(dog,cat), nor by a theory which derives conjunctions from the experienced statistical co-occurences between verbs and nouns. However, this asymmetry is predicted by various linguistic accounts of the internal structure of event descriptions (e.g., Williams, 1981; Marantz,1984; Grimshaw, 1990; Kratzer, 1996). These results provide evidence for the time-varying instantiation of re-usable representations of structure in MTG, consistent with the principle of compositionality, as well as accounts of verb-argument structure.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document