Gratuitous picture of myself.  Wednesday is my clinic day, which means two things: i get dressed up fancy and i drink an extra cup of coffee so that I don’t miss a thing. My own clinic was cancelled for today, which is a bummer, but it means I get to observe my first adult language client. Adult language? That means that the adult has had some kind of brain damage resulting in changes to his/her ability to use language, which is called aphasia.  People with aphasia represent the population i most want to study. Some things I’m currently interested in researching: -Do aphasic people continue to show preserved ERPs (N400 to violation of semantic relationships e.g., “I like my coffee with sugar and dog”, and  P600 to violations of syntax, e.g., “The boy throw the toy”) to stimuli they hear/read? People without brain damage show predictable patterns of brain activation miliseconds after hearing a funky sentence like one of the ones I just wrote.  this includes you.  You read those sentences and had a N400 and a P600.  Normal brains just can’t help it, it’s what they do.  But what about people with aphasia?  Their brains are not fully normal, and they often have difficulty with comprehension (especially of complex sentences), and often produce agrammatic phrases. Is the problem that they have reduced cortical responses to incorrect semantics/syntax?  OR-Do some patients have over-active ERPs, perhaps causing them to second guess every utterance they make because they perceive their own output as incorrect, resulting in halting, nonfluent aphasic speech. Anyway… some things to think about.

Gratuitous picture of myself.  Wednesday is my clinic day, which means two things: i get dressed up fancy and i drink an extra cup of coffee so that I don’t miss a thing. My own clinic was cancelled for today, which is a bummer, but it means I get to observe my first adult language client.

Adult language? That means that the adult has had some kind of brain damage resulting in changes to his/her ability to use language, which is called aphasia.  People with aphasia represent the population i most want to study.

Some things I’m currently interested in researching:

-Do aphasic people continue to show preserved ERPs (N400 to violation of semantic relationships e.g., “I like my coffee with sugar and dog”, and  P600 to violations of syntax, e.g., “The boy throw the toy”) to stimuli they hear/read?

People without brain damage show predictable patterns of brain activation miliseconds after hearing a funky sentence like one of the ones I just wrote.  this includes you.  You read those sentences and had a N400 and a P600.  Normal brains just can’t help it, it’s what they do.  But what about people with aphasia?  Their brains are not fully normal, and they often have difficulty with comprehension (especially of complex sentences), and often produce agrammatic phrases.

Is the problem that they have reduced cortical responses to incorrect semantics/syntax?  OR-Do some patients have over-active ERPs, perhaps causing them to second guess every utterance they make because they perceive their own output as incorrect, resulting in halting, nonfluent aphasic speech.

Anyway… some things to think about.