Two mutually contradictory claims have been put forth concerning recovery from aphasia. One asserts that recovery is complete by one year from onset of aphasia; the other, that recovery may continue for many years. The overall goal of this project is to resolve this contradiction, to determine and describe long-term (5-15 year) recovery patterns in aphasia, and to discover predictor variables for successful (or unsuccessful) recovery.
Specific aims focus on hypotheses related to four aspects of long-term recovery: linguistic, neurological, cognitive, and psychosocial. We shall re-evaluate 150 subject previously examined at the Aphasia Research Center whose aphasia occurred 5-15 years ago. We shall follow a new group of 150 subjects prospectively. All subjects will receive extensive batteries of speech, language, neurological, neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and psychosocial tests. We predict the following outcome: 1. Language continues to improve throughout the years following onset of aphasia, but not all language skills improve equally. 2. Stroke-induced seizure disorder and occurrence of infarction in the right hemisphere, however small the lesion, are two neurological factors which contribute to poor recovery from aphasia. 3. Recovery of language will be independent of other cognitive skills. 4. Recovery will occur more rapidly in patients who have a strong, unified, supportive family and who are, therefore, less depressed.
