SDSU Cognition and Language in Aphasia Lab

Happy Aphasia Awareness Month! Aphasia is an acquired language disorder. It can lead to challenges with thinking of words, talking, understanding, reading, or writing. It typically occurs as a result of a stroke or other injury on the left side of the brain.

According to the National Aphasia Association, the disorder affects over 2 million people in the U.S. We're raising awareness so that we can promote understanding, reduce stigma, and better support this community!

Stay tuned for more posts from us this month!

Visit the National Aphasia Association website [aphasia.org] for more information on this initiative!

CLAL Lab Director JoAnn Silkes presented at the Clinical Aphasiology Conference this week with colleagues from the Aphasia Psychological Care Research Network, Drs. Leora Cherney, Rebecca Hunting Pompon, and Deena Schwen Blackett. There was lots of interest in their topic of how psychosocial well-being is assessed in people with aphasia.

The CLAL is well represented at this year's Clinical Aphasiology Conference in Pittsburgh! The newly-minted Dr. Christina Sen had some great conversation around her poster on her dissertation project, which investigated attentional cues to facilitate word retrieval in sentences.

Celebrating the CLAL's newly-minted Dr. Christina Sen! Under the co-mentorship of CLAL director Dr. JoAnn Silkes and Language and Neuroscience Group director Dr. Tracy Love, she successfully defended her dissertation, titled The Implicit-Explicit Continuum: Attention and Lexical Access in Aphasia. Congratulations, Christina!!

We continued celebrating our graduating members of the CLAL this weekend as undergraduate Research Assistants Caden and Bella marked their accomplishments. These two have taken a major lead on on a few different projects in our lab for almost two years and are now going off to graduate programs in speech-language pathology. We thank them for their great work and wish them both so much success as they continue on their journeys!

Celebrating our new MA graduates from the CLAL and everyone else graduating today from the SDSU School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. We're grateful that these students chose to spend some of their time at SDSU in our lab and wish them well as they blaze their trails forward! We'll miss you!

Sharing a free community resource!📣 Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside offers free therapeutic group classes for adults who have completed or are finishing therapy services. Groups are led by licensed therapists. Flyers attached in English and Spanish! This is not one of our programs-- just passing it along as a resource!

🧠 Stroke Exercise Group: Wednesdays, 2-3 PM
🗣️ Communication Group: Wednesdays, 3-4 PM
🏃 Parkinson's Exercise Group: Thursdays, 3-4 PM

📍 4002 Vista Way, Oceanside | Call (760) 405-2505 to confirm room info

Want to participate in research? We're seeking people (18+) with aphasia that live in San Diego to participate in our study! Our goal is to find new ways to help people think of words. In the study, you would do independent therapy practice. There will be mostly virtual sessions and some in-person sessions, and you will be paid!

Call us at 619-594-7880 OR email at [email protected] (but email might not be confidential).

Our Aphasia Accessible Language (AAL) team is working to make information about our lab and our research more accessible to people with aphasia (PWA) and the greater community.

One way we’re doing this is by making aphasia-friendly research summaries that explain studies we've done. This can help PWA better understand what we do and why. Every study gets 3 summaries, each in a different format. This new summary is mostly words with simple language. It describes a study done a few years ago with collaborators at Temple University, West Chester University, and the University of Washington.

Want to see the original article? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388245725008247

Have questions? Email us at [email protected].

Link to the summary: https://sdsu.instructure.com/courses/57640/files/21039273?wrap=1

We're so proud to be part of the SDSU School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences! Just ranked #6 among MA program in speech-language pathology in the U.S.!

SDSU public health programs, speech-language science rank among nation’s best in graduate school rankings | News | SDSU Four top-25 programs include epidemiology and clinical psychology.