Temporal information processing (TIP) is a well known neural process that underlies many aspects of human cognition, e.g., speech comprehension and speech production. The specific disorders of these language functions result from left hemispheric brain damage. A lot of literature data, as well as earlier experiments performed in our Laboratory have indicated that specific temporal training improves both TIP and auditory comprehension. The aim of this study was to test whether such a training in aphasic patients influences selectively speech reception, or also speech production. We compared performance of ten aphasic subjects before and after the training. Patients attended 16 training sessions (3 sessions a week, 45 minutes each). The training task was to indicate the temporal-order of two sounds presented to both ears in rapid succession. The task difficulty was adjusted adaptively, according to subject’s performance. Before and after the training both TIP abilities (temporal-order threshold measuring for two monaurally presented clicks) and language skills were tested. Language tests comprised global auditory comprehension and phonemic hearing on word and sentence levels, moreover, naming and verbal fluency. The preliminary results showed that our temporal training improved both auditory speech comprehension and speech production. These results indicate that temporal mechanisms underlying both receptive and expressive language functions can be ameliorated by the specific temporal training in milliseconds time domain. Supported by 507/1/N-DFG/2009/0.
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