Which arcuate fasciculus segments matter for aphasia?
In 33 chronic left-stroke aphasia cases, left AF long/anterior/posterior segments predicted naming, fluency, and comprehension beyond cortex; right AF role was unclear.
Source
Functional Contributions of the Arcuate Fasciculus to Language Processing
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Chronic post-stroke aphasia cohort with AF tractography and language regressions controlling for cortex/lesion
- N
- N=33 · People with aphasia after left-hemisphere stroke
- Population
- Chronic left-hemisphere stroke survivors with aphasia (VA Northern California cohort)
- Outcome
- Associations of AF segment volume/integrity with WAB/BNT language scores beyond cortical damage
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Which arcuate fasciculus segments matter for aphasia?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Cohort included 33 individuals with chronic aphasia after left-hemisphere stroke.
well-characterized cohort of individuals with chronic aphasia ( n = 33) following left hemisphere stroke
Mean age was about 63.7 years.
M age = 63.7 1.4 years, from 40 to 83 years of age
What they did
Reconstructed left/right AF with multi-segment tractography and related normalized volume/microstructure to language scores while controlling for lesion and cortical areas.
What they found
Left long→naming; anterior→fluency/naming; posterior→comprehension; posterior emphasized for residual language; no clear right-AF contribution.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Causal repair from stimulating AF, or that dorsal-stream=repetition-only models are fully wrong in every patient.
Key terms
- Arcuate fasciculus (AF)
- Dorsal white-matter pathway linking frontal and temporal language regions.
- Aphasia
- Acquired language impairment, here after left stroke.
- Tractography
- Diffusion MRI reconstruction of white-matter pathways.
- Long / anterior / posterior AF segments
- Anatomical subdivisions with distinct language associations.
- WAB
- Western Aphasia Battery severity/profile measure.
- BNT
- Boston Naming Test of word retrieval.
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Sample size of chronic aphasia cohort?
Common questions
N?
33 chronic aphasia patients.
Posterior AF?
Comprehension / residual language.
Right AF?
No clear role found.
Beyond cortex?
Yes—tracts added predictive value.
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