| Chaleece Sandberg PhD, CCC-SLP |
| Interviewed by Anya Yu |
What is aphasia?
Aphasia is an acquired language disorder following stroke or other acquired brain injury.
What can aphasia research teach us about typically developed populations?
The vast majority of people with aphasia have fully developed and intact language systems before experiencing their brain injury. Also, damage from stroke can be extremely focal. Because of these two characteristics, we can learn a lot about how language is represented in the brain by studying people with aphasia who have very specific deficits.
Some studies have found that there are cognitive benefits to bilingualism. Is this true for aphasic patients?
One line of research that may help answer this question is the exploration of language control versus cognitive control in healthy bilingual adults and bilingual adults with aphasia. Healthy bilingual adults have high cognitive control and high language control. However, there is evidence that bilingual persons with aphasia have cognitive control similar to their healthy counterparts, but have deficits in language control. Importantly, cognitive control is correlated with language control in bilinguals with aphasia (Gray & Kiran, 2019). The fact that cognitive control is intact in bilingual aphasia, and is linked with language control, may mean that this is a currently untapped resource for rehabilitation of language.
Some studies have found that there are cognitive benefits to bilingualism. Is this true for aphasic patients?
One line of research that may help answer this question is the exploration of language control versus cognitive control in healthy bilingual adults and bilingual adults with aphasia. Healthy bilingual adults have high cognitive control and high language control. However, there is evidence that bilingual persons with aphasia have cognitive control similar to their healthy counterparts, but have deficits in language control. Importantly, cognitive control is correlated with language control in bilinguals with aphasia (Gray & Kiran, 2019). The fact that cognitive control is intact in bilingual aphasia, and is linked with language control, may mean that this is a currently untapped resource for rehabilitation of language.
Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about aphasia?
There is a growing health disparity for the bilingual population in the US. Even though approximately 20% of the population speaks a language other than English at home, only about 9% of a Speech Pathologist’s caseload includes people who are bilingual. Add to this the fact that the bilingual population is growing and that the aging population is growing, and it’s easy to see that there will be a growing number of bilingual individuals who are at risk for stroke and aphasia. There are currently not enough resources to adequately address this population. This may be partly due to the stigma that has been associated with being bilingual in the U.S.
References
Alladi, S., Bak, T. H., Mekala, S., Rajan, A., Chaudhuri, J. R., Mioshi, E., . . . Kaul, S. (2016). Impact of bilingualism on cognitive outcome after stroke. Stroke, 47, 258–261. doi:10.1161/ STROKEAHA.115.010418/-/DC1
Gray, T., & Kiran, S. (2019). The effect of task complexity on linguistic and non-linguistic control mechanisms in bilingual aphasia. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 22(2), 266-284. doi:10.1017/S1366728917000712
Hope, T. M., Jones, Ō. P., Grogan, A., Crinion, J., Rae, J., Ruffle, L., & Green, D. W. (2015). Comparing language outcomes in monolingual and bilingual stroke patients. Brain, 138, 1070–1083. doi:10.1093/brain/awv020
Paplikar, A., Mekala, S., Bak, T. H., Dharamkar, S., Alladi, S., & Kaul, S. (2018): Bilingualism and the severity of poststroke aphasia. Aphasiology, DOI: 10.108