Deans' stroke musings: FV 13 Electrophysiological correlates of language recovery – an MEG study of neuroplasticity in chronic post stroke aphasia

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

FV 13 Electrophysiological correlates of language recovery – an MEG study of neuroplasticity in chronic post stroke aphasia

Whatever the hell this means, your doctor won't have read it but you can train your doctor in it.
http://www.clinph-journal.com/article/S1388-2457(17)30271-7/pdf

B. Mohr

Correspondence information about the author B. Mohr

S. Difrancesco

L. MacGregor

Y. Shtyrov

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2017.06.055

Background

Previous studies have demonstrated that efficient language and communication therapy in chronic post stroke aphasia leads to significant clinical language improvements ( Pulvermüller et al., 2001 ) and promotes neuroplasticity. Brain areas frequently associated with functional restitution of language comprise perilesional sites in the left hemisphere ( MacGregor et al., 2015 ) as well as right-hemispheric regions, homotopic to those lesioned in the left ( Mohr et al., 2014 ). To date, however, the neuronal mechanisms underlying therapy-induced language changes and functional restitution are still largely unclear. In the present study, hemispheric contributions to neuroplasticity and neurophysiological changes were investigated in chronic aphasia patients by using magnetoencephalography.

Methods

Patients underwent intensive language action therapy for three hours per day on 10 consecutive week-days. Before and immediately after treatment, language and communication skills were assessed and patients’ brain responses were recorded during automatic language processing, employing a lexical magnetic mismatch negativity (MMNm) paradigm, in which words and meaningless pseudowords were presented auditorily.

Results

After the two-week therapy interval, patients showed significant clinical improvements of language skills, as assessed by the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination. Spatio-temporal dynamics of neuronal changes revealed a significant increase in word-specific neuro-magnetic MMNm activation around 200 ms after stimulus identification points. This neuromagnetic enhancement of the MMNm brain response occurred specifically for words and was most prominent over perilesional areas in the left hemisphere. Importantly, therapy-induced changes in neuromagnetic activation to words significantly correlated with clinical test performance.

Discussion and conclusion

The results suggest that language recovery in chronic post stroke aphasia is associated with neuroplastic changes in both cerebral hemispheres. During automatic language processing, particularly perilesional regions in the left-hemisphere seem to contribute to functional restitution in patients with chronic aphasia.