Neural correlates of phonological and semantic-based anomia treatment in aphasia

Most naming treatments in aphasia either assume a phonological or semantic emphasis or a combination thereof. However, it is unclear whether semantic or phonological treatments recruit the same or different cortical areas in chronic aphasia. Employing three persons with aphasia, two of whom were non-fluent, the present study compared changes in neural recruitment associated with phonologic and semantic-based naming treatments. The participants with non-fluent aphasia were able to name more items following both treatment approaches. Although this was not the case for the participant who had fluent aphasia, her naming errors decreased considerably following treatment. Post-treatment fMRI revealed similar changes in neural activity bilaterally in the precuneus among the two non-fluent participants--increased activity was noted in the right entorhinal cortex and posterior thalamus on post-treatment scans for the third participant. These findings imply that cortical areas not traditionally related to language processing may support anomia recovery in some patients with chronic aphasia.