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Older aphasia suffers 'can benefit from targeted language therapy'
January 09, 2013
Language therapy maybe beneficial for older people with aphasia, study finds
New research has suggested older people with aphasia can improve their language function in the long term after receiving targeted therapy.
Aphasia is a language disorder in which suffers have difficulty speaking and writing and it is commonly triggered by stroke, severe head injury or brain tumours.
The study, published in Brain and Language, argued that intensive and specific language therapy in older people with aphasia improved their ability to name objects.
After six weeks of therapy, it was also revealed the participants had better cognitive potential and their families continued to report improvements six months after the research.
Dr Ana Ansaldo, of the University Geriatrics Institute Montreal, said: "The evidence collected in this functional neuroimaging study shows language therapy stimulates the brain to use alternate circuits."
It was not only parts of the brain responsible for language that were stimulated by the therapy, but another brain system known as the default mode network.
This is the term for when the brain is "on standby" and is not performing a particular task, with the study showing that speech therapy restored connectivity in this network to similar levels seen in the participants' healthy counterparts.
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