Patients with aphasia (loss of ability to understand or produce language) are able to recover language skills through the same mechanisms that allow children to learn to speak.

Using a computer program based on trial and error, the research group led by Christian Dobel, at the University of Münster, has succeeded in recovering language skills in aphasic patients. This system is more effective than traditional methods. Dobel talked about language processing and learning during an IDIBELL Seminar on 27 May in the auditorium of the University of Barcelona (Bellvitge Campus).
The new imaging techniques allow knowing how the brain responds to external stimuli. The most effective way to meet the brain’s response to external stimuli is through evoked potentials, which allow recording cognitive functions by electroencephalography.

Complex activity

Language processing is a complex activity which involves different brain areas. Not all words are processed in the same way and not register the same evoke potentials. Thus, the known or foreseeable terms are processed faster than the unknown ones, the specific terms are easier to remember than abstract ones, active concepts (running, jumping or bending down) are related to the motor area of the brain, while passive concepts are not, and emotional words are processed more intensively than neutral words. In fact, emotional words activate the same neural networks than other emotional stimuli, so that “the words induce real emotions”. All these facts have important implications for the treatment of various diseases. For example, Dr. Dobel’s group has observed different patterns of language processing in people with anxiety and other disorders.

In addition, language seems an innate ability. This capability is not exclusive to childhood, but continues throughout life. “This is like pushing the system and let it set in motion”, says Dobel. This is the basis of the method that the group has been used to treat aphasic patients. This is the basis of a “statistical” learning system of names that works as children learn to talk. Soon the group of Dr. Dobel will apply this method to children with cochlear implants.

About Dobel

Dr. Christian Dobel has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Konstanz, Germany. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the same University of Konstanz and at the Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics. From 2006 he is researcher at the Institute of Biomagnetism and Biosignal analysis at the University of Münster.

His research focuses on studying the process of acquiring a second language, the interaction between vision and language, emotional neuroscience and diseases such as aphasia.