Aphasia research has focused on different linguistic levels, such as the production and comprehension of morphosyntactic structures, the lexicon, phonology, and various aspects of the ability to produce and comprehend narratives. However, many open issues remain. (a) Few studies have co-examined these different levels of language to understand their interconnections. (b) Most research has not examined the “macrostructure” of language (communicative ability/ discourse). (c) Most research has not correlated aphasic disorders with coexisting neuropsychological disorders, so it is not known which brain structures are critical to language and lead to the purely aphasic symptoms, especially the permanent and severe deficits. (d) Few intervention studies in aphasia have focused on sentence-level therapy based on current neurolinguistic research, and most of those have not compared different types of therapy.

Given this situation, the objectives of the proposed study are: (a) In-depth investigation of different linguistic levels in aphasia and their interrelations. (b) Study of the relationship between other neuropsychological disorders and aphasic disorders. (c) Evaluation of aphasic disorders, their symptoms and level of severity, in relation to the location and extent of left-hemisphere damage. (d) In-depth investigation of the efficacy of different types of therapy intervention in aphasia. The project will be carried out by an interdisciplinary team of linguists, neurolinguists, neuropsychologists, cognitive scientists, neurologists, and speech and language therapists, organized into three groups: (a) the neurolinguistics group; (b) the neuropsychology group; and (c) the speech and language therapy group.

Website: http://thales-aphasia.phil.uoa.gr/