Aphasia Research Laboratory

Rm 326 Speech Language and Hearing Sciences
Boston University Sargent College
635 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 02215
Phone: (617)-358-5478/(617)-353-2706
Fax: (617)-353-5074
Email: kirans@bu.edu

RESEARCH OVERVIEW

The primary goal of our research is to further our understanding of the effects of brain damage on communication. In particular, we are interested in language processing and language recovery mechanisms in normal individuals and patients with brain damage. We combine online reaction time experiments and offline paper/pencil tasks to investigate various aspects of lexical semantic processing (words and their meanings) in normal individuals and individuals with aphasia.

Additionally, a major focus of our research is to develop treatment methods to alleviate language deficits. Through theoretically motivated treatment experiments, we hope to demonstrate that following brain damage, language recovery can take place in a predictable manner, and can be far more efficient than traditional didactic approaches
The following are some of the goals of our research

Treatment methods for naming, reading and writing deficits in aphasia
Bilingualism and Bilingual Aphasia Rehabilitation
Online experiments of lexical (word) access and semantic processing
Understanding the various factors that influence word and word meaning access
Using neuroimaging as a tool to identify changes in brain activation as a function of treatment