This information really is absolutely no help for survivors because it doesn't give any protocols used by those lucky persons on how that recovery can occur. Does no one in stroke understand what survivors need to know to get to 100% recovery?
http://dgnews.docguide.com/right-brain-may-help-predict-recovery-language-after-stroke?overlay=2&nl_ref=newsletter&pk_campaign=newsletter
New research published in the journal Neurology suggests that looking
at structures in the right side of the brain may help predict who will
better recover from language problems after a stroke.
“Aphasia is a common and devastating symptom for people who have
strokes on the left side of the brain,” said Gottfried Schlaug, MD,
Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. “Although many people
recover to some degree, many people never make a full recovery, even
after intense speech therapy.”
The current study involved 33 people with an average age of 58 years who had a stroke on the left side of the brain.
All patients had aphasia that persisted to different degrees even
after their usual speech therapy. The researchers also tested 13 healthy
people of similar ages who had never had a stroke.
Both the healthy participants and the stroke group had brain scans
employing a special magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that
allowed them to examine brain tissue integrity and connectivity in
various regions within the brain. Better structural integrity might
suggest better connections among areas of the brain.
They found that patients with aphasia who performed better on the
speech-fluency tests were more likely to have higher structural
integrity in three areas of the brain than the control group: the right
middle temporal gyrus, the right inferior frontal and the right
precentral gyrus.
Researchers were able to show the contribution of these right
hemisphere regions to speech-fluency, since the correlation scores
between the amount of injury to the left hemisphere and speech-fluency
scores were improved when the right hemisphere information was added to
the analysis. For example, the amount of variance explained went from
50% to 62% for words per minute as 1 of 2 fluency measures when
information from the right hemisphere was added to the statistical
analysis.
The study suggests that the right side of the brain reorganises
itself to help recover language/speech-motor functions. Because the
study only looked at one point in time, it is also possible that those
people who recovered better may have had better structural integrity and
more connectivity in those right hemisphere areas of the brain before
their strokes.
“This study suggests that a well-wired right brain actively supports
recovery from aphasia,” said A.M. Barrett, MD, Kessler Foundation, West
Orange, New Jersey. “More research is needed to determine if the
differences in structural integrity in the right brain are there before a
stroke, develop after a stroke or are influenced by some other factor.
Eventually it may be possible to develop new targets in the right brain
for people with aphasia to be treated with new therapies, such as brain
stimulation”
Dr. Schlaug also added that melodic intonation therapy, an
intonation-based therapy that is geared towards the right hemisphere,
may be another possible new treatment target.
SOURCE: American Academy of Neurology
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