Barbara Martin Aphasia Research Grant

Manuel Marte, PhD, CCC-SLP, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine

Project: Bedside Discourse Assessment Across Hemispheric Stroke Profiles: An Acute Feasibility Study

“The first days after a stroke are when communication problems are hardest to measure and also most important to catch. This grant lets us test whether a brief task at the bedside can do what longer assessments often cannot, giving every patient, regardless of which side of the brain was affected, a clearer picture of how they are communicating and what support they may need in the days, weeks, and months ahead.”

Victoria Diedrichs, PhD, CCC-SLP, Michigan State University

Project: Optimizing Script Training Using Spaced Retrieval: A Feasibility and Proof-of-Concept Study

“Script training is an aphasia treatment that involves practicing functional scripted conversations with known compensatory and restorative benefits. Scripts can be personalized and used to self-cue in social interactions, while rehearsing scripts facilitates word retrieval that can generalize to new contexts. Being awarded a Barbara Martin Aphasia Research Grant gives me and my lab the opportunity to take the first steps toward optimizing this treatment approach to maximize its benefits for people with aphasia, while also improving our understanding of how the theoretically motivated changes to the treatment work. This project will produce essential preliminary evidence to support a future clinical trial testing the efficacy of the optimized intervention. I am grateful for the opportunity to undertake this work and hope that by optimizing script training, we can help people live more fully with aphasia.”

David Ifeoluwa Ajayi, Ph.D. Student, University of South Florida

Project: Neural Correlates of Recursive Self-Feedback

“I am excited about this grant because it will support the equipment and resources needed to complete my study and help validate a powerful communication strategy for people with aphasia.”

Dr. Victoria Tilton-Bolowsky, Ph.D. CCC-SLP, Teachers College, Columbia

Project: Semantic Feature Analysis + Metacognitive Strategy Training: A Phase-II Study

“Receiving this grant is the ultimate honor—the National Aphasia Association does such important work supporting and connecting people with aphasia.”

Sophie Arheix-Parras SLP, Post-Doctoral Fellow  at the University of South Carolina

Project Title: Anterior Temporal Lobe stimulation using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to modulate lexicosemantic processes

“Receiving the Barbara Martin Aphasia Research grant is an honor, and I am excited to begin this project. This support enables us to implement non-invasive brain stimulation in a way that could be accessible to clinicians and ultimately enhance recovery outcomes for people with post-stroke aphasia.”

Dr. Sandy Lwi, VA Northern California Healthcare System

Project Title: MERIT: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction to Improve Neuropsychological Functioning in Acquired Brain Injury

“We thus hope this study will be the first of many to adapt loneliness and mental health interventions for PWA, which in turn can have critical downstream preventative health effects. Long-term, the pilot data collected through this study will inform a larger grant focused on conducting a randomized controlled trial of MBSR adapted for PWA.”

Alexander Swiderski Ph.D. Student at the University of Pittsburgh and The Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University

Project Title: The neurocognitive mechanisms underlying semantic feature generation in persons with aphasia.

Swiderski says, “Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) is a widely-used word production treatment for people with aphasia that requires participants to generate semantic features associated with target words.” His study models how the brain interprets this treatment to make it more useful as an aphasia treatment.

Brielle Stark Ph.D. at Indiana University Bloomington and

Sarah Grace Dalton Ph.D., CCC-SLP at Marquette University

Project Title: Identifying the needs and desires of individuals with aphasia related to current discourse assessment practices.

Stark says, “This project is near and dear to the PIs’ hearts. We have focused our careers on improving the way we (researchers and speech-language pathologists) assess and analyze language for individuals with aphasia. We want to shift the focus of assessment to discourse, which is the kind of everyday communication we engage in as a society: telling stories, having a conversation, ordering a meal.”

People with aphasia will partner with the two researchers to identify strengths and weaknesses in currently available materials to improve them for future people with aphasia.

Bijoyaa Mohapatra Ph.D., CCC-SLP at Louisiana State University

Dr.Bijoyaa Mohapatra has a vision for a telerehabilitation program for racially and ethnically diverse, minority, low-income African-American persons with aphasia. This will lead to increased quality of life and lead to new programs for low-income people with aphasia.

Ellyn A. Riley Ph.D., CCC-SLP at Syracuse University

Dr. Ellyn A. Riley studies fatigue and sleepiness in aphasia. This is a common challenge for many individuals as they recover from stroke, which impacts quality of life and communication. Although we know fatigue is common in persons with stroke and aphasia, we do not yet know the best ways to help. This study will tackle that problem.