Exploring supported conversation with familial caregivers of persons with dementia: a pilot study.

Background: Dementia can lead to difficulties in communication between caregivers and patients. Teaching conversational strategies has been effective for a wide array of clients with acquired neurologic disorders and their caregivers. Research indicates positive results for Supported Conversation for adults with Aphasia (SCA) secondary to stroke.

The Main Concept Analysis: Validation and sensitivity in differentiating discourse produced by unimpaired English speakers from individuals with aphasia and dementia of Alzheimer type.

Purpose: Discourse from speakers with dementia and aphasia is associated with comparable but not identical deficits, necessitating appropriate methods to differentiate them. The current study aims to validate the Main Concept Analysis (MCA) to be used for eliciting and quantifying discourse among native typical English speakers and to establish its norm, and investigate the validity and sensitivity of the MCA to compare discourse produced by individuals with fluent aphasia, non-fluent aphasia, or dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT), and unimpaired elderly.

Method: Discourse elicited through a sequential picture description task was collected from 60 unimpaired participants to determine the MCA scoring criteria; 12 speakers with fluent aphasia, 12 with non-fluent aphasia, 13 with DAT, and 20 elderly participants from the healthy group were compared on the finalized MCA.

Treating visual speech perception to improve speech production in nonfluent aphasia.

Background And Purpose: Several recent studies have revealed modulation of the left frontal lobe speech areas not only during speech production but also for speech perception. Crucially, the frontal lobe areas highlighted in these studies are the same ones that are involved in nonfluent aphasia. Based on these findings, this study examined the utility of targeting visual speech perception to improve speech production in nonfluent aphasia.

Voice onset time production in speakers with Alzheimer's disease.

In the present study, voice onset time (VOT) measurements were compared between a group of individuals with moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) and a group of healthy age- and gender-matched peers. Participants read a list of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, which included the six stop consonants. The VOT measurements were made from oscillographic displays obtained from the Brown Laboratory Interactive Speech System (BLISS) implemented on an IBM-compatible computer.

An atypical case of Foreign Accent Syndrome.

A new case of Foreign Accent Syndrome is described. This American woman presented with a British- or Australian- sounding accent after stroke, which resulted in a lacunar infarct in the left internal capsule. The atypical etiology and apparent changes in lexical use are described.