Project description
A closer look at pronoun processing in aphasia
Aphasia is a loss of ability to comprehend or formulate language. The most common cause is brain damage resulting from a stroke. This makes the elderly more vulnerable to suffering from this language impairment. The EU-funded ProResA project will study primary progressive aphasia, which results from progressive brain degeneration, and post-stroke aphasia. Specifically, the project will investigate the time course of how people with aphasia precisely work out to whom a pronoun refers during moment-by-moment online sentence processing. It will also study how pronoun processing is impaired in aphasia in different languages (such as Dutch, French and Turkish). The findings will assist in determining early sensitive markers of (primary progressive) aphasia.
Objective
European populations are aging, and aging individuals are more vulnerable to neurological diseases which often result in
language impairments (i.e. aphasia). These impairments render the skilled communication needed for successful everyday
living impossible, with impact on mental health, quality of life and career burden. Although language impairments in aphasia
have been studied, aphasic individuals' sentence interpretation in time-sensitive measurements including the time course
and source of their brain responses have only scarcely been examined. This action seeks to generate scientific knowledge
on primary progressive aphasia (PPA, a form of aphasia resulting from progressive brain degeneration) and post-stroke
aphasia by investigating the time course of how people with aphasia precisely work out to whom a pronoun (e.g. her/herself)
refers during moment-by-moment on-line sentence processing. This action aims to fill this important gap by answering the
following research questions: (i) Does pronoun processing become impaired in PPA as the disease progresses, and if so
how? (ii) How is pronoun processing modulated in the brain with respect to its moment-by-moment time course and locations
of brain responses in aphasia and unimpaired individuals? (iii) Is pronoun processing impaired in aphasia in typologically
different languages (i.e. Dutch, French and Turkish)? (iv) What are the factors influencing pronoun processing difficulty in aphasia?
Findings of this interdisciplinary action will inform both the theories of language breakdown in aphasia and clinical
assessment of sentence-level processing in the aphasia types with direct implications for treatment of these debilitating
disorders. Importantly, when this action is complete, an eye-movement / machine learning database of aphasic processing,
which can potentially be used to determine early sensitive markers of (primary progressive) aphasia, will be made publicly
available for future research re-use.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
75794 Paris
France