A Longitudinal Study of Auditory Comprehension in Poststroke Aphasia

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Linguistics
• Neurology

Background:

• Longitudinal studies on auditory comprehension recovery in post-stroke aphasia often start in the subacute phase.
• A gap exists in understanding recovery from the acute to the chronic phase.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate longitudinal changes in auditory comprehension from acute to chronic phases in post-stroke aphasia.
• To identify the neural correlates of these comprehension changes using lesion-symptom mapping.

Main Methods:

• Twenty-one individuals with aphasia (PWA) post-left middle cerebral artery stroke were assessed at acute, subacute, and chronic stages.
• Auditory comprehension was measured using sentence-picture matching (five measures) and sequential commands.
• Lesion-symptom mapping (LSM) correlated lesion location with comprehension deficits.

Main Results:

• All five auditory comprehension measures showed significant improvement from acute to chronic phases.
• Persistent comprehension deficits were noted for canonical sentences and sequential commands in the chronic phase.
• Lesions in the supramarginal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus (STG), and middle temporal gyrus (MTG) were associated with noncanonical sentence and sequential command comprehension deficits.

Conclusions:

• Individuals with more severe acute impairments achieve similar chronic performance to those with milder aphasia.
• The left MTG is crucial for auditory comprehension recovery, particularly for complex linguistic stimuli.