News & Insights
What Causes Aphasia?
What Is Aphasia? Aphasia is a language disorder that is caused by a stroke or brain trauma. This disorder affects how people communicate and understand language, as it may affect their ability to speak, understand, read, or write. According to the National Aphasia Association, there are more than 2 million people in... More
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... More
Faculty Feature: Andreas Charidimou
Dr. Charidimou is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, and a Core Faculty member for the Center for Brain Recovery. He also holds roles as an Attending Physician, Director, Disease Modifying Therapy in Alzheimer’s Disease (DMTAD) Program Director, Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy/Small Vessel... More
CBR Annual Report 2025
The Center for Brain Recovery's 2025 Annual Report report features letters from our leadership team, highlights about our recent research, programming, and events, as well as a list of faculty publications (July 2024 – June 2025) matching the Center's mission. Read the full report
CBR Seminar Series: Simona Mancini
CBR Seminar Series: Simona Mancini, September 15, 2025 Title: Dynamic interplay between language and domain-general functions Abstract: The relationship between domain-general cognitive processes and language functions has emerged as a critical area of investigation in understanding both typical language processing and recovery from aphasia. Studies on healthy young adults reveal minimal domain-general... More
3rd Annual Neuroscience of the Everyday World (N.E.W.) Conference, 2025
July 28th – 29th, 2025 This year marked the 3rd edition of the Neuroscience of the Everyday World (N.E.W.) Conference, drawing in 191 in-person and 27 virtual attendees from across the United States and all over the world with registrants hailing from 12 different countries; including South Korea, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, More
How ICCR Helps Students with TBI Return to College
By Lauren Hodges, August 27th, 2025 For college students and young adults living with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), the road back to campus can feel overwhelming. Memory lapses, trouble organizing thoughts, or difficulty keeping up with class discussions aren’t just frustrating, they can make the return to higher education seem... More
Boston 25 News: BU researchers create new AI tool to predict markers of Alzheimer’s disease
Boston 25 News covered CBR Core Faculty member Vijaya Kolachalama's recent research into levering artificial intelligence for accurately predicting signs of Alzheimer's disease. Read the full article
How Speech Therapy Helps with Brain Recovery
Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) It is commonly understood that Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) assist children during the developmental stages of speech, but SLPs work with patients of all ages, including adults who have experienced a brain injury resulting in aphasia. Speech-Language Pathology can play a critical role in the brain recovery process, but it... More
Faculty Feature: Alice Cronin-Golomb
Dr. Cronin-Golomb is a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Boston University for the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, a Core Faculty member for the Center for Brain Recovery, and the Director of the Vision & Cognition Laboratory. Q&A with Alice Cronin-Golomb, PhD What is your current research focus, and... More
CBR Seminar Series: Jennifer Mack
CBR Seminar Series: Jennifer Mack, July 14, 2025 Title: Improving Communication Partners’ Comprehension of People with Aphasia: A Language Processing-Based Approach Abstract: People with aphasia (PWA) often have difficulty conveying their thoughts to communication partners. One way to address this problem is to improve communication partners’ skills in understanding PWA. In a... More
CBR Seminar Series: Stacy Andersen
CBR Seminar Series: Stacy Andersen, June 30, 2025 Title: Characterizing cognitive function and resilience to Alzheimer's disease using digital technologies Abstract: One obstacle to studying cognitive aging is the inability to identify cognitive impairment and cognitive change with adequately high sensitivity and specificity. Brain changes related to aging or to neurodegenerative diseases... More
CBR Researchers Present at the Clinical Aphasiology Conference 2025
This past May, four researchers from the BU Center for Brain Recovery attended and presented at the 2025 Clinical Aphasiology Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At the conference, CBR Assistant Scientific Director, Maria Varkanitsa, presented the research “Theory of mind deficits in people with post-stroke aphasia: Prevalence and links to aphasia... More
Theory of Mind Deficits in People with Post-Stroke Aphasia
Acknowledgements This work was conducted as part of a larger NIH-funded project titled “Functional reorganization of the language and domain-general multiple demand systems in aphasia” (NIDCD Grant 1R01DC016950, PIs: Swathi Kiran and Evelina Fedorenko). It reflects a collaborative effort from current and former researchers at the Boston University Center for Brain... More
Faculty Feature: Archana Venkataraman
Dr. Venkataraman is an Associate Professor at Boston University, a Core Faculty member for the Center for Brain Recovery, and the Principal Investigator for the BU Neural Systems Analysis Laboratory. Q&A with Archana Venkataraman What is your current research focus, and how does it align with the Center for Brain Recovery's mission? My... More