CBR Seminar Series: Alex Leff
CBR Seminar Series: Alex Leff, February 9, 2026
Title: Practice-induced changes in brain structure: evidence from two app-based trials in people with aphasia
Abstract:
People with acquired aphasia can improve their language abilities with impairment-based training, but the effects are usually item specific. We developed two apps, one for comprehension (Listen-In) and one for speech production (iTalkBetter), and tested them in separate randomised, controlled trials. I will focus on the behavioural effects caused by these two apps, associated longitudinal changes in brain structure and draw some conclusions about how and where therapy effects are expressed in the brains of people with post-stroke aphasia.
Bio:
Alex Leff is a Professor of Cognitive Neurology and a Consultant Neurologist at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. His main clinical and academic interest is in cognitive rehabilitation, especially in the field of acquired language disorders and vision. He is developing mechanistic accounts of how cognitive disorders can be improved by different types of therapy -mainly behavioural- using functional and structural brain imaging.
He has developed a range of web-based rehabilitation tools that can be used by therapists and patients with visual or language problems; these projects have been sponsored by the MRC, NIHR and The Stroke Association. Alex thinks that web-based applications are a good way to make scientifically proven behavioural therapies available to suitable patients and their therapists.
At the UCLH National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Alex has a specialist out-patient MDT assessment clinic for patients with hemianopia and/or higher disorders of vision. He also helps run the Queen Square Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Programme which is embarking on an RCT of ICAP therapy funded by the NIHR.