RT Conference Proceedings
T1 A reappraisal of echolalia in aphasia: A case-series study with multimodal neuroimaging
A1 López-Barroso, Diana
A1 Torres-Prioris, María José
A1 Roé-Vellvé, Núria
A1 Thurnhofer-Hemsi, Karl
A1 Paredes-Pacheco, José
A1 López-González, Francisco Javier
A1 Tubío, Javier
A1 Alfaro Rubio, Francisco
A1 Berthier-Torres, Marcelo Luis
A1 Dávila-Arias, María Guadalupe
K1 Afasia
AB Introduction: Verbal echoes are commonplace in patients with aphasia, yet information on their cognitive andneural mechanisms remains unexplored (Berthier et al., in press). This study aims to instantiate the concept ofecholalia (Berthier et al., 2016) by reappraising its relevance in the frame of modern neuroscience in threedifferent types: (1) automatic echolalia (AE) (parrot-like repetition of all verbal stimuli); (2) mitigated echolalia(ME) (changes in echoes for communicative purposes), and (3) effortful echolalia (EE) (echolalia witharticulatory struggling, distorted prosody, and increased effort).Methods: Case-series study of three variants of echolalia in three patients with chronic post-stroke aphasiausing cognitive testing and multimodal imaging including structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI),diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), functional MRI (fMRI) during repetition of words and non-words, and restingstate fMRI (rsfMRI). Patient 1 had mixed transcortical aphasia (mutism and nil auditory comprehension withintact repetition). Patient 2 had residual Wernicke’s aphasia with mildly impaired auditory comprehension; andpatient 3 had Broca’s aphasia with impaired syntactic comprehension.Results: Patient 1 had severe AE associated with two large lesions in the left dorsolateral and mesial frontallobe and the left temporo-parietal cortex (isolation of speech area). DTI revealed absent left dorsal and ventralstreams and full development of right white matter tracts. Using fMRI and rsfMRI a compensatory activity in bothcerebral hemispheres (right greater than left) was found. Patient 2 had ME associated with DTI-provenincomplete damage to the left dorsal stream and complete damaged to the left ventral stream. fMRI and rsfMRIrevealed compensatory activity via right hemisphere structures. Patient 3 had EE associated to a large lesion inthe left perisylvian language core.Discussion:Our study revealed heterogeneous aphasic profiles and cognitive deficits in the different types ofecholalia amongst patients with chronic aphasia. In addition, multimodal imaging showed a complex pattern ofnetwork rearrangement in both cerebral hemispheres which depended upon the localization of the structurallesion. Our preliminary findings set out a starting point to advance research on echolalia eventually providinghints for neurorehabilitation.References: Berthier ML et al.. P. Coppens and J. Patterson (Eds.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, Burlington, MA(2016)Berthier ML et al. Aphasiology (2017)
YR 2017
FD 2017-02-03
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10630/12887
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10630/12887
LA eng
NO Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.
DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga
RD 20 ene 2026