Department of Neurosurgery Assistant Professor Matthew J. Nelson, Ph.D., has received a K01 grant funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his study titled "Neurophysiological mechanisms of language comprehension".
Language disorders impact 6 to 8 million people in the United States. One common symptom of language disorders is difficulty comprehending the grammatical structure of sentences.
During his clinical trial, Nelson will use electrical stimulation in neurosurgical patients to manipulate phrase-structure building neural activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior temporal sulcus (STS) while trial participants attempt to comprehend a sentence.
At the end of the sentence, the participants will select a picture that matches the sentence they just read. Behavioral measures analyze the subject’s response time as they advance through the sentence, which Nelson and colleagues will compare to the neural activity simultaneously recorded as those responses are made.
"By observing the resulting effect on behavior and neural activity recorded, I will develop a better understanding of grammatical deficits in language disorders, leading to improved treatments and interventions," said Nelson.
Nelson will be able to use data from this clinical trial in collaboration with his colleagues in the UAB Neuroengineering and Brain-Computer Interface Initiative, which seeks to use data to create neuro-prosthetics and other treatments for patients with neurologic, conditions such as stroke, neurodegenerative disorders, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and other brain diseases.