Forecasting Recovery: CBR Faculty Awarded $3.2M NIH Grant
Center for Brain Recovery (CBR) faculty members Drs. Archana Venkataraman and Swathi Kiran have been awarded a $3.2M NIH grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to develop computational tools that will predict language recovery in people with post-stroke aphasia.
Venkataraman, an expert in machine learning, and Kiran, a clinician-scientist with deep expertise in neuroscience and language rehabilitation, are combining their complementary skills to create AI-driven models to advance our abilities to treat aphasia.
The project is titled “Machine Learning Methods for Predicting Post-Stroke Aphasia and Language Recovery”, and the research aims to address a critical public health need by developing new tools that leverage deep neural networks to learn and identify brain-based biomarkers for language recovery. These tools will be used to reliably predict personalized rehabilitation outcomes for individuals with post-stroke aphasia.
“The goal of this work is to use advanced machine learning models to estimate and forecast how patients recover their language skills over time and what aspects of brain function best predict this recovery,” said Dr. Swathi Kiran. “Once we can develop such advanced models, we can use this information in better decision support tools and for personalized treatment planning.”
Utilizing neuroimaging and demographic data, this project will create novel computational models capable of identifying predictive patterns about language improvement over time for people with aphasia. This work will continue building upon recent innovations in artificial intelligence and apply these advancements to datasets of chronic post-stroke aphasia.
This research is an interdisciplinary effort with fellow CBR faculty— Prakash Ishwar, Maria Varkanitsa, and the development of the project included contributions from the late Margrit Betke.
This collaboration amongst CBR faculty from a diverse array of disciplines— including engineering, computer science, and speech-language science— exemplifies the Center for Brain Recovery’s mission of bringing together an interdisciplinary group of researchers to address the complex challenges of treating, curing, and preventing neurological disorders.