This is a continuation of a program for the study of clinical, neurolinguistic and neuroanatomic aspects of aphasia. The long term objectives are to advance the understanding of the mechanisms of normal language and their neural basis so as to develop a coherent view of how the symptomatology of aphasia relates to the injury of particular brain structures and consequent modification of linguistic and cognitive capacities. A concurrent goal is apply developing theoretical insights to a rationally based diagnostic assessment and treatment of aphasia. Specific goals in the proposed project period and methods of accomplishing them are: 1. To investigate disorders of sentence comprehension and sentence production in terms of the explanatory power of specific cognitive and linguistic principles. 2. To study word production and word comprehension with techniques that probe the unfolding of these processes and their breakdown in real time. 3. To study the long term recovery of aphasics in terms of changes in neurological, linguistic, cognitive and social function. 4. To study the basis for perseveration in aphasia, and the basis for its improvement with therapy. 5. To investigate the neurochemical basis of nonfluency in aphasia and its pharmacological treatment, using bromocriptine. 6. To investigate the role of the right hemisphere in mediating language recovery in aphasia. 7. To study the CT and MRI scan lesion correlates of long term recovery in particular language skills and to compare the effectiveness of these two imaging techniques.
