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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

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

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Cortical tracking reveals disrupted syntactic processing dynamics in aphasia.

M Blake Rafferty¹, Tim Saltuklaroglu², Eun Jin Paek²

¹New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA; University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Knoxville, TN, USA.

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior

|July 14, 2026

Summary

Neural tracking reveals how people with aphasia (PWA) process complex sentences. Earlier neural responses to dependency integration predict comprehension difficulties in PWA, especially for challenging sentence structures.

Keywords:

Agrammatism Aphasia Cortical tracking EEG Sentence comprehension Syntax

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Psycholinguistics
Computational Linguistics

Background:

Sentence comprehension relies on hierarchical structure and dependency integration within working memory.
People with aphasia (PWA) often struggle with syntactically complex sentences, but the underlying neural mechanisms are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the neural mechanisms of syntactic processing in PWA using electroencephalography (EEG).
To examine cortical tracking of hierarchical constituent closure (node count) and dependency integration cost during sentence comprehension.

Main Methods:

EEG was used to record brain activity in PWA and healthy controls during a sentence-picture matching task.
Neural alignment with syntactic predictors (node count, integration cost) was quantified using conditional mutual information.
Sentences varied in structure (subject- vs. object-relative clauses) and semantic reversibility.

Main Results:

Node count tracking was enhanced for reversible sentences, indicating increased parsing under ambiguity.
PWA showed wider node count peaks, suggesting prolonged constituent closure processing.
Earlier integration cost peaks in PWA predicted poorer comprehension accuracy for complex, semantically ambiguous sentences.

Conclusions:

Neural tracking measures can reveal structure-specific processing differences in aphasia.
The timing of neural alignment with integration cost captures online dependency resolution demands.
These findings offer insights into the neural basis of language comprehension deficits in PWA.