Sign Language & the Brain
Information on Stroke and Aphasia for the Deaf Community
There is a great deal of information on the web about stroke and its affect on people. There is, however, little information out there about how it may effect deaf people who use American Sign Language (ASL) as their primary language. We hope this page will help members of the Deaf Community and their families and friends understand the ways stroke can affect the language abilities of ASL users. To learn more about Strokes and Aphasia in Deaf People » (click here)
To be part of our Sign Language research » (click here)
The overall objective of our research is to study the biological foundations of human language. Signed languages provide a powerful tool for investigating the nature of human language and language processing, the relation between cognition and language, and the neural organization for language. For perception, signed languages depend upon high-level vision and motion processing systems, and for production, they require the integration of motor systems involving the hands and face. These facts raise many questions: What impact does this different biological base have for grammatical systems? For the acquisition of language? How does it affect non-linguistic cognitive structures and processing? Are the same or different neural systems involved? Our laboratory investigates these issues by studying Deaf and hearing ASL signers. This site is designed to be a helpful tool to those who may have a need to test a sign language user for aphasia.
To learn more about Sign Aphasia Tests » (click here)
