Which arcuate fasciculus segments matter for aphasia?

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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

Ivanova MV, Zhong A, Turken A, et al. · Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021

doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.672665 Read the full paper ↗84 citationscc by

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

Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.

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

33 chronic aphasia patients.

Posterior AF?

Comprehension / residual language.

Right AF?

No clear role found.

Beyond cortex?

Yes—tracts added predictive value.