Investigating insight into inner speech in aphasia

 描述（由申请人提供）：失语症是一种获得性语言和沟通障碍，影响约100万美国人，并导致严重的长期残疾。患有失语症的人经常觉得他们可以在脑海中说出某些单词，即使他们不能大声说出这些单词。由于这种“成功的内部言语”的感觉很难验证，临床医生无法确定这些报告是否有意义，如果有意义，他们可以告诉我们关于单词发现的内部心理过程。值得注意的是，尽管成功的内心言语感对许多失语症患者来说是一种日常体验，但之前只有一项发表于1976年的研究直接询问了失语症患者的内心言语，并测试了这些自我报告是否有意义。在此基础上，使用现代技术，本项目探讨如何内部言语的主观报告与客观的心理和神经过程的单词发现措施。主要假设是，成功的内部言语感来自于对语音词形式的获取。该假说的一个推论是，与语音通达相关的大脑活动与内部言语是否正确的主观报告相对应。我们将测试这些假设使用内部/大声命名任务，语音判断，和功能磁共振成像内部命名。这些测试检查内部言语的报告是否预测（1）随后的大声说话，（2）获得有关相同单词的语音信息，以及（3）在脑海中调用这些单词时的大脑活动。这项研究旨在测试假设在单一的主题水平，因为语言和认知缺陷的个体差异，预计会影响洞察内部言语。迄今为止收集的试点数据表明，失语症的内部言语的自我报告是有意义的，可能反映了假设的语音访问。我们还发现，自我报告的内部语言预测逐字逐句的成功，在随后的治疗失名症，证明了这项工作的临床重要性。本研究为语言和失语症的研究提供了新的信息来源，也为失语症的个体化治疗提供了新的思路。此外，这项研究将提高我们对失语症个人经历的理解，这是临床医生，失语症患者及其家人的重要目标。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Aphasia, an acquired impairment of language and communication, affects about one million Americans, and causes significant long-term disability. People with aphasia often feel that they can say certain words in their heads, even though they can't say them aloud. Because this sense of "successful inner speech" is hard to verify, clinicians cannot be sure whether these reports are meaningful, and if so, what they can tell us about the internal mental processes of word-finding. Remarkably, although the sense of successful inner speech is an everyday experience for many people with aphasia, only one prior study, published in 1976, directly asked people with aphasia about their inner speech and tested whether these self-reports are meaningful. Building on this prior work using modern techniques, this project examines how subjective reports of inner speech relate to objective measures of the psychological and neural processes of word-finding. The main hypothesis is that the sense of successful inner speech emerges from access to a phonological word form. A corollary of the hypothesis is that brain activity related to phonological access corresponds with the subjective report of whether inner speech is correct or not. We will test these hypotheses using an inner/aloud naming task, phonological judgments, and functional MRI of inner naming. These tests examine whether reports of inner speech predict (1) subsequent aloud speech, (2) access to phonological information about the same words, and (3) brain activity when calling these words to mind. The study is designed to test hypotheses at the single-subject level because individual differences in language and cognitive deficits are expected to influence insight into inner speech. Pilot data collected to date demonstrate that self-reports of inner speech in aphasia are meaningful and likely reflect phonological access as hypothesized. We have also found that self-reports of inner speech predict word-by-word success in subsequent anomia treatment, demonstrating the clinical importance of this work. This research will provide a new source of information to study language and aphasia, and potentially a new way to guide individualized aphasia therapy. Further, this research will improve our understanding of the personal experience of having aphasia, an important goal for clinicians, people with aphasia, and their families.