The Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Anomia Recovery following Personalized Observation, Execution, and Mental Imagery Therapy: A Proof of Concept

Abstract

The impact of sensorimotor strategies on aphasia recovery has rarely been explored. This paper reports on the efficacy of personalized observation, execution, and mental imagery (POEM) therapy, a new approach designed to integrate sensorimotor and language-based strategies to treat verb anomia, a frequent aphasia sign. Two participants with verb anomia were followed up in a pre-/posttherapy fMRI study. POEM was administered in a massed stimulation schedule, with personalized stimuli, resulting in significant improvement in both participants, with both trained and untrained items. Given that the latter finding is rarely reported in the literature, the evidence suggests that POEM favors the implementation of a word retrieval strategy that can be integrated and generalized. Changes in fMRI patterns following POEM reflect a reduction in the number of recruited areas supporting naming and the recruitment of brain areas that belong to the language and mirror neuron systems. The data provide evidence on the efficacy of POEM for verb anomia, while pointing to the added value of combined language and sensorimotor strategies for recovery from verb anomia, contributing to the consolidation of a word retrieval strategy that can be better generalized to untrained words. Future studies with a larger sample of participants are required to further explore this avenue.

Embodied Semantics in a Second Language: Critical Review and Clinical Implications

“…They demonstrated a significant change in functional connectivity in the right sensorimotor networks when a significant linguistic improvement was present, suggesting that this therapy improves naming abilities in aphasic patients. Even more recently, Durand et al (2018), explicitly attributed their rehabilitation approach (Personalized Observation, Execution, and Mental imagery therapy, POEM) to the recent evidence of the embodied framework and identified the neural substrate of their approach via neuroimaging before and after intervention. They combined the potential of action observation, gesture execution and mental imagery into the therapy of two aphasic patients (i.e., proof of concept study).…”

Ecological meanings: A consensus paper on individual differences and contextual influences in embodied language

“…These findings provide preliminary results on how factors impacting the contextual presence of an embodiment effect can be exploited in what they call 'action observation therapy', and encourage the testing of new action-based treatments to recover language disease(Picano, Quadrini, Pisano, & Marangolo, 2021). Besides action observation therapies, other treatments have already been proposed, based on the interaction between the motor and language systems, including Semantic Feature Analysis therapy(Boyle & Coelho, 1995), personalized observation, execution, and mental imagery therapy(Durand & Ansaldo, 2013;Durand, Berroir, & Ansaldo, 2018;Durand, Masson-Trottier, Sontheimer, & Ansaldo, 2021), gesture production therapies(Goldin-Meadow, Nusbaum, Kelly, & Wagner, 2001;Rose, Attard, Mok, Lanyon, & Foster, 2013) and language-action therapies(Difrancesco, Pulvermüller, & Mohr, 2012;Stahl et al, 2018). In a similar vein, neuromodulation studies have shown that stimulating the motor cortex(Branscheidt, Hoppe, Zwitserlood, & Liuzzi, 2017;Meinzer, Darkow, Lindenberg, & Flöel, 2016) and even cerebellar and spinal cord (seePisano & Marangolo, 2020) facilitate verb retrieval in PWA.…”

Resting-State Functional Connectivity following Phonological Component Analysis: The Combined Action of Phonology and Visual Orthographic Cues

“…For the ten participants in this study, it could contribute to explain why, even if they presented variable anomia breakdown loci, they all benefited from FR-PCA. Moreover, as per previous work in our lab [ 34 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ] and following the original protocol [ 20 ], frequency and dosage (3 times per week for 5 weeks total, approximately 60 min sessions) ensure the feasibility of Fr-PCA in the clinical practice in Quebec. Moreover, these therapy variables correspond to optimal variable ranges in terms of minutes per session [ 65 , 66 ], the number of sessions weekly [ 65 , 66 ], and cumulative dosage [ 66 ] reported in previous studies on naming therapies that improve naming performance in persons with aphasia.…”

“…The experimental protocol is similar to previous studies conducted in our lab [ 34 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ]. A baseline evaluation was completed prior to therapy, including a language assessment and an initial fMRI session (T0).…”