In non-fluent aphasia, nouns tend to dominate verbal communication. It makes sense. They're concrete, visible, and easy to picture. But then your patient tries to tell you something:“Grandma. Raccoon. Garage.” Wait, what?!I need a verb. Immediately. Did Grandma feed the raccoon? Befriend the raccoon? Trap him? Name him? 🧠 Why verbs are harder "Apple" is a simple object. You can draw it, hold it, picture it instantly. "Kick" refuses to sit still. It's a soccer ball flying through the air, a...
9 days ago • 1 min read
Your brain keeps two records of everything you read. One stores the gist. This is the meaning, the shape of it, what it was roughly about. The other stores the verbatim trace: the actual words, the specific details, the data point in the third paragraph. The gist is durable. It sticks around, gets consolidated into long-term memory, and becomes part of what you "know." The verbatim trace is fragile. It starts degrading almost immediately. To be fair, it's supposed to. Retaining every word of...
16 days ago • 1 min read
Reading a text message. Skimming a menu. Catching up on the news. Most of us don't think twice about these things... until we can't do them the way we used to. After a stroke or brain injury, reading often gets harder, slower, and more exhausting. If you've noticed this, you're not alone. 🧠 What's going on in the brain Reading isn't a single skill. It's a complex chain of steps your brain performs in a fraction of a second: recognizing letters, combining them into words, pulling meaning from...
20 days ago • 1 min read
A patient reads “dog” easily. And the non-word “slib” without hesitation. But show them “plaid" and they said "played." The word "island" becomes "iz-land." What's going on here? 🤔 Answer: surface alexia (the phonological route is intact; irregularly spelled words are a struggle) If you got that – kudos! 🤗If you didn’t… don’t beat yourself up. 🥴 Even if you nailed the diagnosis, the treatment details for surface alexia might be rusty. As SLPs, we're expected to hold a lot of information in...
22 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader – Quick question: when you get a new aphasia referral, how much of your evaluation is focused on reading? Alexia tends to be a small part of the assessment, and while functional reading always gets a goal in the treatment plan, the depth of evaluation and treatment it actually warrants often gets squeezed out by everything else on the caseload, right? 🙈 Given that over 80% of people with aphasia present with alexia… that’s a gap worth noting. The thing is, “acquired alexia” isn’t a...
28 days ago • 1 min read
About six years ago, I published a short e-book called Setting Goals in Aphasia Therapy. This 11-page PDF has been downloaded more than 11,500 times. 🤯 Apparently, lots of SLPs want help writing goals! 🙋♀️ One page of the e-book is a template for writing SMART goals, the kind payors want to see. Goals need to be specific, measurable, relevant, and time-bound so we know when they’ve been achieved. ✅ The template asks you helpful questions… but sometimes what you really need are ideas for what...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
I saw this post recently from an SLP who described feeling so “on” all day: back-to-back patients, constant talking, cueing, thinking, modeling. By the time she got home, she couldn’t even bring herself to speak. 😩 If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In a 2024 survey, 62% of SLPs reported symptoms of burnout. In medical settings, we can see 8, 9, 10 patients a day. There’s no built-in quiet time. No pause between sessions. Being fully “on” for hours straight takes a toll. We were...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
After an acquired brain injury, subtraction often breaks down before addition. Not because it’s “harder math," but because it tends to place greater demands on working memory and executive function (Dehaene et al., 2003). Try this in your head: Most people get this quickly. 5 tens plus 7 ones = 57. Let's do another: This time, you have to hold 40 in your mind, subtract 10, then subtract 7 - mentally tracking each step to get 23. Same numbers. Different cognitive load. That extra mental...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello! It's time again for our biannual round-up of resources for medical speech pathology. February is Heart Health Month ♥️ and Black History Month 🌍, so we've gathered a few resources for both. 1. ♥️ Aphasia-Friendly Heart Education: The Aphasia Institute’s Talking About series covers many topics. Try the Heart Health edition to help patients learn how to care for their ticker. (Save 25% on all resources through March with code "25OFF"!) 2. 🗣️ Weekly Aphasia Programming: The National...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
