Computer therapy can help people with aphasia find lost words

Computer therapy can help people with language disorder aphasia learn new words – even years after a stroke, a study has revealed.

More than 350,000 people in the UK are living with aphasia, which is caused by an injury to the brain, and can make it difficult for people to talk, understand, read and write.

One in three people are affected with the disorder after a stroke.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield found there were a number of significant benefits to using computer therapy for those affected by aphasia, in comparison to usual speech and language therapy alone.

Currently there is limited speech and language therapy available for patients in the long term after a stroke and a lot of people with aphasia want more therapy than they receive.

The study offered patients with aphasia the opportunity to take part in self-managed speech and language therapy using a computer at home, in addition to face to face therapy available to them.

More than 270 people from 21 NHS speech and language departments across the UK took part in the trial – all were between four months and 36 years post-stroke.

Results of the five-year study showed computer therapy enabled patients to increase their speech and language practice.

Participants also significantly improved their ability to say the words they chose to practise, showing that people with aphasia can learn new words even after a long time post-stroke with computer therapy.

And they could still say the words six months after the computer therapy had finished.

They spent 28 hours on average undergoing the computer therapy compared with 3.8 hours of usual speech and language therapy over a six month period.

Researchers said the computer therapy approach tested, which included a combination of tailoring the programme to the individual with aphasia by a speech and language therapist, independent practise at home by the person with aphasia, and
volunteer or speech and language therapy assistant support, cost half as much as providing the same amount of extra therapy face-to-face.

Dr Rebecca Palmer, who led the study, said: “People with aphasia tend to do quite well with therapy but that isn’t usually available to them after a few months.

“Our study showed that 61% of people continued to use the computer therapy after the end of the trial intervention period showing that people with aphasia want to continue learning words and can do this independently.

“I hope the results of this study give both speech and language therapists and people with aphasia and their carers hope for further recovery.”