The Language and Brain Lab (LABlab) does research on the neural and cognitive mechanisms that enable people to understand and produce words and sentences rapidly and effortlessly, how these abilities are impaired following brain damage, and how treatment can improve these key language processes for people living with aphasia.
Team Mission
LABlab’s team works together using methods from experimental psychology and neuroscience, insights from psycholinguistics and cognitive science, and data from aphasia assessment and intervention to shed light on what is impaired and what is intact in aphasia. Our ultimate goal is to leverage these insights to improve both our understanding of and our interventions for aphasia.
Our research is funded by the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and VA Rehabilitation Research & Development. It is carried out in partnership with colleagues in the Departments of Communication Science and Disorders and Psychology and the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, and in the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center and the Audiology and Speech-Pathology Program at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. It has resulted in more than 40 publications to date and has shed key light on the mechanisms underlying aphasic language impairments and treatment-related aphasia recovery.
LABlab’s publications highlight our work to understand basic processes in language comprehension and production, how these processes are impaired in aphasia, and how treatment can improve those processes and communicatruve quality of life for people living with aphasia.
There are opportunities to join the LABlab team or participate in LABlab research! Please click on the ‘Get Involved’ link to find out more.
