Robotic arm rehabilitation in chronic stroke patients with aphasia—the loss of ability to understand or express speech—may promote speech and language function recovery, according to new research from New York University and published in Frontiers in Neurology.
The robotic arm rehabilitation in this study targeted the right arm, as the participants had each suffered a left hemisphere stroke leading to a deficit in motor function on their right side. Individuals with left hemisphere strokes affecting motor function are also likely to have deficits in speech and language processing, and the present study investigated whether those individuals may improve in their speech and language performance following treatment aimed at the domain of motor function.
The research team—led by Adam Buchwald, associate professor of communicative sciences and disorders at NYU Steinhardt’s School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, as well as Carolyn Falconer-Horne, a recent PhD graduate of the department—observed small but consistent improvement on measures assessing speech articulation and overall language processing in aphasia.
“While this is an initial finding that should be interpreted cautiously, it remains exciting to consider the possibility that stroke rehabilitation in one domain would improve performance in another domain,” Buchwald says, in a media release from New York University.
“It remains possible that some treatment approaches encourage plasticity and reorganization that can span multiple domains, most likely those with similar neural substrates. Further testing of these combined effects could lead to breakthroughs in our approach to stroke rehabilitation for individuals with complex deficits affecting mobility, speech and language processing, and other cognitive domains.”
[Source(s): New York University, Science Daily]
