Aphasia Neuroplasticity Review

Supplementary Table S1. Participants: Cohorts

StudyLanguageInclusion criteriaN aphasiaN controlData reuseNotes
Weiller et al. (1995) German Lesion including L pSTG; moderate-to-severe Wernicke's aphasia in the subacute period; now recovered and not aphasic per formal testing; able to perform verb generation task 6 6 N 6 patients were selected from a database of 600 carefully documented cases
Belin et al. (1996) French MCA; persistent severe non-fluent aphasia followed by marked improvement with MIT 7 0 N
Ohyama et al. (1996) Japanese Able to repeat single words 16 6 N
Heiss et al. (1997) German 6 6 N
Karbe et al. (1998) German MCA; able to repeat single words 12 10 N Only 7 of the 12 patients took part at T2
Cao et al. (1999) US English Aphasia with significant recovery over months to years (ADPASS > 70th percentile) 6 37 N 2 additional patients excluded: 1 unable to reliably describe performance post-scan; 1 due to head motion
Heiss et al. (1999) German AAT repetition ≥ 50 23 11 N
Kessler et al. (2000) German Mild to moderate aphasia on TT; at least 50 out of 150 on AAT repetition 24 0 N
Rosen et al. (2000) US English L IFG, possibly extending to neighboring regions 6 14 Y 1 participant was reported in a previous case study; of the 14 controls, 6 were studied with PET and 8 with fMRI
Blasi et al. (2002) US English L IFG, possibly extending to neighboring regions 8 14 N
Leff et al. (2002) UK English 15 8 N
Blank et al. (2003) UK English Initial non-fluent aphasia due to anterior perisylvian lesion; subsequently recovered the ability to speak in sentences; patients were divided into those with and without damage to the IFG pars opercularis (POp+: n = 7; POp-: n = 7) 14 12 N 8 of 12 controls included in Blank et al. (2002)
Cardebat et al. (2003) French No severe aphasia; no leukoaraiosis 8 6 N
Sharp et al. (2004) UK English Lesion in vicinity of L STG; no extensive frontal damage; no inferior temporal damage; able to perform tasks 9 18 N
Zahn et al. (2004) German Global aphasia in the first three months; some improvement of comprehension within 6-12 months 7 14 N
Crinion & Price (2005) UK English 17 18 N
de Boissezon et al. (2005) French Subcortical stroke; no severe aphasia 7 0 N
Connor et al. (2006) US English L IFG, possibly extending to neighboring regions 8 14 Y Re-analysis of data from Blasi et al. (2002)
Crinion et al. (2006) UK English 24 11 N Results of control participants previously reported in Crinion et al. (2003)
Saur et al. (2006) German MCA; age < 70 years; able to distinguish forward vs backward speech outside the scanner; no pronounced small vessel disease 14 14 N 4 additional patients excluded: 1 health problems; 1 scanner noise; 2 did not tolerate fMRI; 198 patients with aphasia were screened
Meinzer et al. (2008) German 11 0 N
Raboyeau et al. (2008) French Naming deficit; good comprehension 10 20 N
Richter et al. (2008) German Main deficits in production rather than comprehension 16 8 N 8 additional patients excluded: 5 completed only one of the two sessions; 3 unable to perform the tasks
de Boissezon et al. (2009) French Only part of L MCA; able to perform word generation; no severe aphasia 13 0 Y 7 out of 13 patients appear to represent the same data reported in de Boissezon et al. (2005)
Fridriksson et al. (2009) US English 11 10 N
Menke et al. (2009) German Moderate to severe anomia 8 9 N
Specht et al. (2009) German 12 12 N 15 controls were scanned but 3 were randomly excluded to match group sizes for jICA.
Warren et al. (2009) UK English Comprehension deficit per CAT and TROG (1 patient did not meet this criterion); anterolateral superior temporal cortex spared 16 11 Y 8 additional patients excluded: lesions involved L anterolateral superior temporal cortex; reanalysis of subset of dataset from Crinion et al. (2006)
Chau et al. (2010) Cantonese 7 0 N
Fridriksson (2010) US English 19 0 Y 7 additional patients excluded: 6 for making fewer than 5 correct responses in one or more sessions; 1 for excessive head motion; "several" patients overlapped with those reported by Fridriksson et al. (2009, 2010); demographic data includes excluded patients
Fridriksson et al. (2010) US English 15 9 N
Sharp et al. (2010) UK English Lesion in vicinity of L STG; no extensive frontal damage; no inferior temporal damage; able to perform tasks 9 18 Y Additional analysis of same dataset as Sharp et al. (2004)
Thompson et al. (2010) US English Agrammatic 6 12 N
Tyler et al. (2010) UK English 14 10 N 2 of the 14 patients were not stroke, but were post resective surgery
van Oers et al. (2010) Dutch MCA; mRS < 3; able to perform at least 2 out of the 3 tasks 13 13 N
Papoutsi et al. (2011) UK English 14 15 Y Reanalysis of same dataset from Tyler et al. (2011); 1 patient had post-surgical haematoma rather than stroke (per Tyler et al., 2011)
Sebastian & Kiran (2011) US English 8 8 N
Szaflarski et al. (2011) US English Moderate aphasia, L MCA 8 0 N 3 additional patients excluded: 2 metallic artifact; 1 seizure at time of stroke
Tyler et al. (2011) UK English 14 15 Y Not stated, but it seems like most of the patients also participated in Tyler et al. (2010); 1 patient had post-surgical haematoma rather than stroke
Weiduschat et al. (2011) German Age 55-85 10 0 N 4 additional patients excluded: 3 malfunction of TMS device or claustrophobia; 1 recovered nearly completely prior to intervention
Allendorfer et al. (2012) US English MCA; moderate-severe aphasia; mRS ≤ 3 16 32 Y "Part of a larger ongoing study", may overlap with other studies from this group
Fridriksson, Hubbard, et al. (2012) US English Broca's aphasia 10 20 N 3 additional patients excluded: 1 due to a metal implant; 2 for severely non-fluent speech; demographic data includes excluded patients
Fridriksson, Richardson, et al. (2012) US English 29 14 Y 1 additional patient excluded: contraindications to MRI; 26 of 30 patients were included in Fridriksson (2010); demographic data includes excluded patient
Marcotte et al. (2012) Canadian French Moderate-severe aphasia; anomia 9 0 N
Schofield et al. (2012) UK English Comprehension deficit 20 26 Y 1 additional patient excluded: excessive head motion; patients recruited from database so may have participated in prior studies from this group, but not stated explicitly; demographic data includes excluded patient
Wright et al. (2012) UK English 21 21 Y Unclear how many, if any, patients were included in previous studies from this group; design is identical to Tyler et al. (2010); 3 of the 21 patients were not stroke, but were post resective surgery
Szaflarski et al. (2013) US English 27 0 N
Thiel et al. (2013) German 24 0 N 6 additional patients excluded: 4 did not tolerate MRI or PET scans; 2 TMS device was defective
Abel et al. (2014) German Anomia; no severe AoS or dysarthria 14 0 N 9 additional patients excluded: 4 for ceiling performance; 5 for technical problems
Benjamin et al. (2014) US English "at least minimal evidence of non-fluent output"; lesion including precentral gyrus or underlying white matter 14 0 N
Brownsett et al. (2014) UK English No involvement of ACA territory 16 17 N 3 additional patients excluded: 2 withdrew after attempting first scan; 1 had severe dysarthria
Mattioli et al. (2014) Italian L MCA; comprehension mildly impaired 12 10 N Treated and untreated groups differed in severity at baseline, albeit not significantly
Mohr et al. (2014) UK English MCA; mild-moderate non-fluent aphasia; no severe comprehension deficit 6 0 N 6 additional patients excluded: 4 for health risks; 2 for technical problems and data loss; patient numbers in tables 1 and 2 appear not to correspond with patient numbers later in the paper
Robson et al. (2014) UK English Wernicke's aphasia (impaired spoken single word comprehension, impaired single word repetition, fluent, sentence-like speech with phonological/neologistic errors) 12 12 N
Szaflarski et al. (2014) US English 32 32 Y Some participants included in Allendorfer et al. (2012); one participant was < 18 years old at time of stroke; there was also a perinatal stroke group, not relevant for this review; 3 participants were excluded but it is not stated whether they were adult or perinatal patients.
van Hees et al. (2014) Australian English 8 14 N
Abel et al. (2015) German Anomia; no severe AoS or dysarthria 14 14 Y 9 additional patients excluded: 4 for ceiling performance; 5 for technical problems; same dataset as Abel et al. (2014)
Kiran et al. (2015) US English Impaired naming 8 8 N
Sandberg et al. (2015) US English 10 0 N
Geranmayeh et al. (2016) UK English No severe receptive aphasia 53 24 N Prior strokes were allowed only if no aphasia resulted
Griffis et al. (2016) US English Moderate aphasia, L MCA 8 0 Y 3 additional patients excluded: 2 metallic artifact; 1 seizure at time of stroke; same patients as Szaflarski et al. (2011); different fMRI paradigm acquired in the same sessions
Sims et al. (2016) US English Some spared tissue in L IFG 14 8 Y 2 additional patients excluded: 1 had no spared tissue in the L IFG; 1 had a R hemisphere stroke; although not stated, it is apparent that many of the patients were included in Sandberg et al. (2015)
Darkow et al. (2017) German L hand motor area spared; mild aphasia 16 16 N
Geranmayeh et al. (2017) UK English 27 0 Y Patients are a subset of those in Geranmayeh et al. (2016); 24 control participants are described, but no imaging data from the controls are analyzed in this paper
Griffis, Nenert, Allendorfer, & Szaflarski (2017) US English 43 43 Y Same dataset as Griffis et al. (2017) Hum Brain Mapp
Griffis, Nenert, Allendorfer, Vannest, et al. (2017) US English 43 43 Y Data were collected as part of "several separate studies"
Harvey et al. (2017) US English Mild-moderate non-fluent aphasia; relatively intact comprehension; able to produce meaningful words and phrases 6 0 N
Nardo et al. (2017) UK English Anomia; good single word comprehension; relatively spared word and nonword repetition; no AoS; spared or partially spared L IFG 18 0 N
Nenert et al. (2017) US English At least mild aphasia per TT 19 38 Y Patients are a subset of the 24 participants in Szaflarski et al. (2015), a clinical trial on CIAT
Qiu et al. (2017) Mandarin Broca's aphasia 10 10 N
Skipper-Kallal et al. (2017a) US English Able to name 20% of pictures correctly in the scanner 32 25 Y 14 additional patients excluded: < 20% accuracy in scanner; 29 of the participants overlap with the other Skipper-Kallal et al. (2017) paper
Skipper-Kallal et al. (2017b) US English 10% accuracy on scanner task 39 37 Y 10 additional patients excluded: < 10% accuracy in scanner; 29 of the participants overlap with the other Skipper-Kallal et al. (2017) paper
Dietz et al. (2018) US English 12 0 Y 2 additional patients excluded: 1 for illness; 1 for MRI contraindication or personal conflict (inconsistent information provided); same data as Dietz et al. (2016), which is a methodological paper
Hallam et al. (2018) UK English Semantic aphasia; left frontal damage (+ other regions, typically) 14 16 N
Nenert et al. (2018) US English Aphasia at acute screening (not necessarily at first study time point) 17 85 N 1 additional patient excluded: significant signal artifacts; presence and severity of aphasia assessed on hospital admission, not at first study time point, so it is not clear that all participants actually had aphasia at first study time point
Pillay et al. (2018) US English Residual phonologic retrieval deficit; intact semantic processing 21 0 N
Szaflarski et al. (2018) US English 12 0 N 1 additional patient excluded: scanned at only 2 out of 3 time points
van de Sandt-Koenderman et al. (2018) Dutch Severe non-fluent aphasia (< 50 words/minute); articulation deficits; repetition severely affected; moderate-good auditory comprehension 9 0 N
van Oers et al. (2018) Dutch MRS ≤ 3; ability to perform tasks 12 8 N
Barbieri et al. (2019) US English 18 23 N 1 additional patient excluded: developed a hematoma between baseline and post-testing; one patient had two strokes within one day, but we would consider that essentially a single stroke
Johnson et al. (2019) US English Anomia 30 17 N 5 additional patients excluded: 2 withdrew from non-treatment arm; 3 fMRI acquisition errors; 1 did not complete treatment and post-treatment scanning (but of these latter 4, one must have at least completed the non-treatment arm); there were 26 patients in the treated group and 10 in the untreated group, but 6 patients overlapped between the two groups (they joined the treated group after completing the untreated phase)
Kristinsson et al. (2019) US English < 80% on PNT; able to name at least 5 out of 40 items during fMRI; WAB-R spontaneous speech ≥ 2; WAB-R auditory comprehension ≥ 2 87 0 Y 65 were previously included in Fridriksson et al. (2018), a tDCS study
Purcell et al. (2019) US English Chronic dysgraphia (acquired impairment in spelling) 21 0 N 4 additional patients excluded: 3 health reasons; 1 data acquisition error
Sreedharan, Chandran, et al. (2019) Malayalam Broca's aphasia or anomic aphasia; comprehension relatively preserved; "motivated for speech therapy" 8 4 N 3 additional patients excluded: 2 for claustrophobia; 1 for transportation issues
Hartwigsen et al. (2020) German Lesion involving left temporo-parietal cortex and sparing left frontal cortex; relatively well-recovered 12 0 N 2 additional patients excluded: 1 lost to follow-up; 1 did not show any sound-related neural activation in auditory cortex after sham cTBS
Stockert et al. (2020) German Lesion localized to frontal or temporal cortex 34 17 Y 50 additional patients excluded: 19 lesions spanned frontal and temporal, or were subcortical, or had persisting large vessel occlusions; 31 not all three timepoints were acquired; 8 patients were included in Saur et al. (2006); there may also be overlap with Saur et al. (2010), a study that did not meet our inclusion criteria; 1630 patients screened for inclusion; frontal patients scanned later than temporal patients at T1 and T2

N aphasia = Number of individuals with aphasia; N control = Number of control participants; Data reuse = Were any of the participants included in any previous studies?; AAT = Aachen Aphasia Test; ACA = anterior cerebral artery; ADPASS = Aphasia Diagnostic Profiles Aphasia Severity Score; AoS = apraxia of speech; CAT = Comprehensive Aphasia Test; CIAT = constraint-induced aphasia therapy; fMRI = functional magnetic resonance imaging; IFG = inferior frontal gyrus; jICA = joint independent components analysis; L = left; MCA = middle cerebral artery; MIT = melodic intonation therapy; mRS = modified Rankin Scale; N = No; PET = positron emission tomography; POp+ = pars opercularis damaged; POp- = pars opercularis spared; pSTG = posterior superior temporal gyrus; R = right; STG = superior temporal gyrus; T1, T2, etc. = first time point, second time point, etc.; TMS = transcranial magnetic stimulation; TROG = Test for Reception of Grammar; TT = Token Test; Y = Yes; Yellow underline = minor limitation; Orange underline = moderate limitation.