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Aphasia: Research

Volume 486: debated on Thursday 22 January 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what research his Department has commissioned into the causes and treatment of aphasia. (249823)

The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has funded the following current or recently completed projects of relevance to aphasia:

assessing the effectiveness of communication therapy in the North West (Dr. Audrey Bowen, university of Manchester);

the phoneme factory: producing a multimedia screening and therapy system for children with phonological disorders (Professor Sue Roulstone, North Bristol NHS Trust);

speech-driven environmental control systems: new assistive technologies for disabled and elderly people (Professor Mark Hawley, university of Sheffield and Barnsley Hospitals NHS Trust); and

evaluating communication impairment using technology-based transcriptionless discourse analysis measures: a demonstration of reliability and validity (Dr. Marian Brady, Glasgow Caledonian university).

The NIHR clinical research network is also supporting a number of related studies. Details are available on the network’s portfolio database at:

www.ukcrn.org.uk/index/clinical/portfolio_new.html

The Medical Research Council (MRC) is one of the main agencies through which the Government support medical and clinical research. The MRC is an independent body that receives its grant in aid from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

Over the last five years, the MRC has funded four projects relevant to aphasia:

finding the right words: predicting, and treating, spoken language production deficits after aphasic stroke (Dr. J. Crinion, University college London);

normal and disordered language comprehension: a cognitive science approach (Professor L. Tyler, Birkbeck college);

neural basis of words, meaning and syntax (Professor F. Pulvermuller, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit); and

stroke recovery (Professor R. Wise, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre).