How our brain’s ability to learn new words could help rehabilitation for stroke patients
Tuesday 14 December, 2010
Faster rehabilitation for stroke patients may be possible if treatments can harness the brain’s natural ability to remember and store new words in its long term memory, according to scientists from the Medical Research Council (MRC).
Researchers at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit have found that after just 15 minutes of listening to a new word, the brain creates new networks of neurons to make up a long-term memory trace. This process happens far quicker than previously thought.
The study complements previous research by the same group of MRC scientists to develop a treatment called constraint-induced aphasia therapy (CIAT), in which stroke patients who suffer from chronic language problems significantly improved their ability to speak and understand language after a short series of intensive speech-language-therapy sessions.
In the latest study, the researchers attached electrodes to the heads of 16 healthy volunteers and recorded electrical signals generated by their brains while they listened to 160 repetitions of new made-up words and familiar words. Scientists analysed how the brain activity changed over a period of 14 minutes as the made-up word became more and more familiar. Brain activity in response to these new words increased until the new memory traces were virtually indistinguishable from the memory traces of an already familiar word.
Dr Yury Shtyrov who led the study at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, said:
“We now know that even a little practice can lead to changes in the brain and the formation of new brain ‘networks’ that help us to memorise words. This research suggests that faster rehabilitation may be possible if treatments for people with brain damage, such as stroke patients, target the brain’s ability to rapidly create these memory traces. The next step is to test this theory in patients affected by stroke or other types of brain damage.”
Professor Friedemann Pulvermuller who oversaw the MRC research and has worked extensively to develop CIAT, said:
In other research we’ve shown that fast, intensive therapy sessions of CIAT are effective at re-training stroke patients to speak. This study lays the theoretical foundations for other potential treatments that work in the same way and exploit the brain’s natural ability to re-wire and memorise words quickly.
The paper ‘Rapid Cortical Plasticity Underlying Novel Word Learning’ is published today in the Journal of Neuroscience.
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