A team of west London scientists has been working closely with people who've had a stroke affecting their language (aphasia) to understand how the brain is able to recover after a stroke. The group lead by Professor R.J.S. Wise, Consultant Neurologist at Hammersmith Hospital will enable Doctors and Speech and Language Therapists to understand the neural mechanisms responsible for the recovery of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Although most people who have aphasia often see dramatic improvement in their speech and language within the first 3 months after their stroke, recovery continues at a slower rate for up to one year and in some cases over many years. Having problems with language can be very disabling and a major handicap towards returning to work. While previous research has made significant advancements towards prevention of strokes and better acute medical care in hospital there is no pharmaceutical treatment for the long term recovery of aphasia. This group of scientists has decided to study a wide range of people who are recovering language after a stroke and look at how their brains are recovering over time using positron emission tomography (PET). PET scanning looks at blood flow patterns to the brain thereby identifying which areas of a person's brain are working while they are doing a task such as listening to stories or counting aloud. People recover at different rates and to different degrees even if they have the same attack. One reason may be the different areas and mechanisms that the brain can use to recover. Some people's brains may rewire so that the language areas bypass the damaged area, in others the damaged part of the brain may begin to heal itself, growing new neurons and regenerating slowly or alternatively brain areas that previously were not involved in language processing may be recruited to become the new language areas. It is not known which of these is the most common and/or effective mechanism underlying recovery. By scanning some people soon after their stroke others years after theirs, some who've made an excellent recovery and others who still have problems, it will become clearer as to which are the most effective natural mechanisms that the brain has to recover. This in turn will be a significant advance towards developing new speech and language therapy techniques or new pharmaceutical treatments to further enhance brain repair and language recovery. This would offer a huge chance for improvements for aphasia people.

Our thanks go to the many members from the Different Strokes group in Central London have been involved in the project and on the next page are some of the exciting results from their contributions which have significantly advanced our understanding of recovery of speech comprehension after a left hemisphere stroke.

If you would like to find our more about the study and/or how to get involved please contact Jenny Crinion, speech and language therapist at 0207-833-7487 or j.crinion@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk