Naming treatment outcomes in post-stroke aphasia are variable and the factors underlying this variability are incompletely understood. In this study, 26 patients with chronic aphasia completed a semantic judgment fMRI task before receiving up to 12 weeks of naming treatment. Global (i.e., network-wide) and local (i.e., regional) graph theoretic measures of pre-treatment functional connectivity were analyzed to identify differences between patients who responded most and least favorably to treatment (i.e., responders and nonresponders) and determine if network measures predicted naming improvements. Responders had higher levels of global integration (i.e., average network strength and global efficiency) than nonresponders, and these measures predicted treatment effects after controlling for lesion volume and age. Group differences in local measures were identified in several regions associated with a variety of cognitive functions. These results suggest there is a meaningful and possibly prognostically-informative relationship between patients' functional network properties and their response to naming therapy.

中文翻译：

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功能语义网络的治疗前图测量与慢性失语症的命名治疗结果相关

中风后失语症的命名治疗结果是可变的，这种可变性背后的因素尚不完全清楚。在这项研究中，26 名慢性失语症患者在接受长达 12 周的命名治疗之前完成了语义判断 fMRI 任务。分析了治疗前功能连通性的全局（即网络范围）和局部（即区域）图论测量，以识别对治疗反应最好和最差的患者（即反应者和无反应者）之间的差异，并确定网络是否测量预测的命名改进。有反应者的整体整合水平（即平均网络强度和整体效率）高于无反应者，这些措施在控制病灶体积和年龄后预测了治疗效果。在与各种认知功能相关的几个区域中确定了局部测量的组差异。这些结果表明，患者的功能网络特性与其对命名疗法的反应之间存在有意义且可能具有预后信息的关系。