Redefining Recovery from Aphasia

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Aphasia, an impairment of propositional language caused by brain dysfunction, is one of the most common and disabling disorders afflicting humans. This important book, written by two world renowned aphasiologists, makes a paradigmatic shift. These authors address aphasic disorders and recovery by examining nonlinguistic neurobehavioral factors, such as emotions, praxis, and executive functions. These nonlinguistic functions are mediated by functional networks that are independent, but strongly interconnected with the primary language areas and thus play an import role in supporting recovery and adaptation. This important book is critical reading for those clinicians, educators and investigators who deal with people who are suffering with aphasia. * Kenneth M Heilman, MD, The James E. Rooks Jr. Distinguished Professor of Neurology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville * Redefining Recovery from Aphasia is a unique book, tying information from speech/language pathology, neurology, neurolinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience in general into a unified approach to recovery from aphasia. The disparate strands of information which these authors bring together not only illuminate the process of recovery from stroke or brain injury causing aphasia, but also provide insight into new approaches to aphasia rehabilitation. The key concept is multifunctionality, how the language cortex can recover, with help from structures in the brain more specialized in functions such as attention, short-term and long-term memory, executive function, emotion, praxis, and visual processing. The book should be of interest to all who deal with patients with aphasia, including physiatrists, neurologists, speech/language pathologists, neuropsychologists, and linguists. * Howard Kirshner, MD, Professor and Vice Chair, Neurology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center *