Baycrest

10 BrainMATTERS SPRING|SUMMER 2021 Individualized Brain Stimulation THERAPY BRINGS NEW HOPE TO THOSE WITH APHASIA Language plays a crucial role in our daily lives. It allows us to communicate and build connections with others, get the information we need, learn new things, navigate our surroundings and even stay safe. So when our language skills are impaired, it can have devastating consequences. This is a worrying reality for those with aphasia. Aphasia is a language disorder that impacts all forms of verbal communication, including speech, language comprehension, and reading and writing abilities. Among other things, aphasia can affect our ability to name common objects, engage in conversation, understand and use words correctly and follow instructions. It affects around one-third of stroke survivors and can also be present in those with dementia, especially in the form of primary progressive aphasia. "Aphasia can be very isolating," says Dr. Jed Meltzer, Baycrest's Canada Research Chair in Interventional Cognitive Neuroscience and a neurorehabilitation scientist at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute (RRI). "It can negatively affect people's personal relationships, and it often determines whether or not someone can continue working." With such potentially debilitating impacts, aphasia can seem like a frightening diagnosis. However, Dr. Meltzer and his team want to help individuals with aphasia recover and live life to the fullest. They are pioneering the use of individualized brain stimulation therapy to treat aphasia in recovering stroke patients. In a recent study, they tested language performance and used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure brain waves in 11 stroke survivors with aphasia before and after they underwent brain stimulation therapy. The scientists found that the participants had abnormal electrical activity in brain regions close to but outside the area destroyed by the stroke. This abnormal activity was mainly a shift to slower brain waves, a pattern they have also observed in individuals with dementia. Dr. Jed Meltzer

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