2nd Place Winner of the BCI Award 2018: ​A BCI-Based Language Training for Chronic Aphasia

Описание: ​A BCI-Based Language Training for Patients with Chronic Aphasia

Aphasia refers to an impairment of language abilities mainly due to a left-hemispheric stroke. About 20% of all first stroke patients remain with a persistent, chronic communicative impairment which has a large impact on their quality of life​. For the 610,000 first stroke incidents in the US alone​, this translates to approx. 122,000 new chronic aphasic patients every year. In the chronic phase, high-intensity language training guided by a speech therapist can lead to improvements, but with a limited generalization to functional communication and moderate effect sizes only​. Motivated by the success of recent BCI-supported hand motor training protocols, Michael Tangermann and his team from Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany have implemented and validated a BCI-based closed-loop training protocol for chronic aphasia patients after stroke.

Michael Tangermann ​1,3​, David Hübner​ 1,3​, Simone Denzer, Atieh Bamdadian 4​, Sarah Schwarzkopf​ 2,3​, Mariacristina Musso​ 2,3

1 ​Brain State Decoding Lab, Dept. Computer Science, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany.
2 ​Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany.
3 ​Cluster of Excellence BrainLinks-BrainTools, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany.
4 ​Inovigate, Aeschenvorstadt 55, 4051 Basel, Switzerland.