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Utilizing Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to Improve Language Function in Stroke Patients with Chronic Non-fluent Aphasia

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Modality-specific sustained attention deficits in aphasia: task performance and lesion analysis.

Svetlana V Kuptsova¹, Arianna N LaCroix¹, Oleg V Nikolsky²

¹Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.

Brain Communications

|December 22, 2025

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

People with aphasia show significant sustained attention deficits, especially with auditory tasks, impacting their cognitive function. These modality-specific attention impairments highlight challenges beyond language difficulties in aphasia recovery.

Keywords:

VLSM aphasia modality specificity sustained attention

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Speech and Language Pathology

Background:

Aphasia, resulting from left-hemisphere stroke, involves language impairments and often co-occurring cognitive deficits.
Attention deficits are frequently observed in aphasia, affecting language processing, yet neural correlates and modality influences are under-researched.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate sustained attention deficits in people with aphasia across different stimulus modalities (visual, auditory) and content (verbal, non-verbal).
To explore the neural correlates of sustained attention deficits in aphasia and how they are influenced by stimulus modality.

Main Methods:

A cross-sectional study involving 56 individuals with aphasia post-left-hemisphere stroke, 14 post-right-hemisphere stroke, and 23 healthy controls.
Participants completed four matched sustained attention tasks varying in modality and linguistic content. Structural MRI scans were analyzed for lesion-symptom mapping.

Main Results:

People with aphasia exhibited significantly worse performance and slower reaction times on auditory tasks compared to controls, indicating auditory-specific sustained attention deficits.
Aphasia subtypes showed comparable sustained attention deficits, though non-fluent aphasia had slower reaction times across most tasks, while fluent aphasia showed auditory-specific slowing.
Lesion-symptom mapping linked poorer performance on visual verbal tasks to frontal lobe lesions, but no distinct auditory modality-specific neural correlates were identified.

Conclusions:

People with aphasia demonstrate modality-specific sustained attention deficits, with a notable impairment in the auditory domain.
These findings suggest that impaired auditory processing contributes significantly to attention deficits in aphasia.
Attention deficits in aphasia extend beyond language impairments and are influenced by stimulus modality, requiring tailored rehabilitation strategies.