Naming Ability in the Chronic Phase of Moderate-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

Introduction: Naming difficulties are commonly reported in the acute and subacute stages of recovery of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and across severity levels. Previous studies, however, have used samples of mixed chronicity (acute and chronic) and severity (mild and severe) and then aggregated data across individuals from these distinct groups. Thus, we have little knowledge about the persistence of naming difficulties into the chronic stage of recovery in individuals with moderate-severe TBI.

Semantic Memory, Traumatic Brain Injury, and the Iceberg Effect: What Deficits May Lie Below the Surface?

Purpose: The purpose of this viewpoint was to advocate for increased study of semantic memory ability in traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Method: We review modern conceptualizations of semantic memory and its neural correlates and discuss how common neuroanatomical and cognitive deficits in TBI place this population at an increased risk for semantic disruption. Building on discussions at the 2024 International Cognitive-Communication Disorders Conference, we offer possible explanations for how these disruptions may have been overlooked by our field and offer examples of how semantic memory has been studied in other populations as well as how this work may apply to TBI research.

An Ecological Momentary Assessment and Intervention Tool for Memory in Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury: Development and Usability of Memory Ecological Momentary Intervention.

Background: Memory and learning deficits are among the most impactful and longest-lasting symptoms experienced by people with chronic traumatic brain injury (TBI). Despite the persistence of post-TBI memory deficits and their implications for community reintegration, memory rehabilitation is restricted to short-term care within structured therapy sessions. Technology shows promise to extend memory rehabilitation into daily life and to increase the number and contextual diversity of learning opportunities.

Hippocampus supports long-term maintenance of language representations: Evidence of impaired collocation knowledge in amnesia.

Traditional systems consolidation theories of memory suggest that the role of the hippocampus in maintaining memory representations diminishes over time, with learned information eventually becoming fully independent of the hippocampus. Knowledge of collocations in one's native (L1) language are acquired during development and are solidly acquired by adulthood. Remote semantic knowledge of collocations might therefore be expected to be resistant to hippocampal pathology.

Reduced on-line speech gesture integration during multimodal language processing in adults with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury: Evidence from eye-tracking.

Background: Language is multimodal and situated in rich visual contexts. Language is also incremental, unfolding moment-to-moment in real time, yet few studies have examined how spoken language interacts with gesture and visual context during multimodal language processing. Gesture is a rich communication cue that is integrally related to speech and often depicts concrete referents from the visual world.