Non-Verbal Working Memory in Post-Stroke Motor Aphasia: A Pilot Study Using the Tactual Span

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Clinical Neurology

Background:

• Working memory (WM) deficits are common after left-hemisphere ischemic stroke, particularly in motor aphasia.
• Research on non-verbal WM, including visuospatial and tactile modalities, is limited in motor aphasia.
• Non-verbal assessment tools are crucial for evaluating WM in aphasia due to language impairments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare tactile and visuospatial WM performance in post-stroke motor aphasia patients.
• To validate the one-hand Tactual Span task as a clinical measure for WM assessment.
• To investigate the relationship between tactile and visuospatial WM in this population.

Main Methods:

• A cohort of 29 participants (14 with motor aphasia, 15 controls) underwent cognitive testing.
• Tests included Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices, Visuospatial Span, Tactual Span, and a visual 1-Back task.
• The one-hand version of the Tactual Span task was specifically evaluated for clinical utility.

Main Results:

• The aphasia group exhibited significantly lower performance on all WM tasks compared to controls.
• The Tactual Span task demonstrated high sensitivity (92.9%) and moderate specificity (66.7%) in discriminating between groups.
• The Tactual Span task showed potential as a clinical tool, with specific cut-off scores and AUC values for forward and backward stages.

Conclusions:

• Non-verbal WM impairments in post-stroke motor aphasia appear to affect tactile and visuospatial modalities similarly.
• The Tactual Span task is sensitive to left-hemisphere stroke damage.
• The Tactual Span task holds promise as a valuable clinical tool for assessing WM in motor aphasia patients.