UCL Speech and Language Sciences students Nabeela Hussain and Poppi Dickens will complete independent projects on the UTILISE-2 study as part of the Speech and Language Therapy MSc qualifications. Nabeela and Poppi are following their own interests within the study on the UTILISE app. They are working hard on transcribing and preparing the data for their chosen analyses. We look forward to working with them this academic year!
Welcome India!
The UTILISE team are excited to be hosting a research placement with India Bamrah, BSc Psychology student from Cardiff University. India will be working closely with Rosemary, Claudia and Kerry to prepare data for the UTILISE-2 study and a crossover pilot study exploring the effect of ordering UTILISE before or after a word app. India will also join sessions and focus groups to learn more about the experience of people with aphasia and skills to support their communication. We’re thrilled India will be with us for the academic year 2024-2025!
A wonderful summer placement with Jieun Kim from Mount Holyoke College, USA
Undergraduate Jieun Kim joined the UTILISE team for 3 months from May to August 2024. We loved working with Jieun! Here Jieun reflects on her experience:
“Hello all, my name is Jieun Kim, and I am an undergraduate student originally from South Korea who just turned junior (Year 3) at Mount Holyoke College in the US. It feels nostalgic and really nice to reflect on this wonderful summer back by writing this blog post.
This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to intern at the UCL Cognition and Grammar Lab, working on the UTILISE project under the guidance of Professor Varley, Kerry, and Claudia. Reflecting on the past few months, I’m filled with a sense of gratitude for the experience and the insights I’ve gained.
One of the most impactful aspects of this internship was working with participants who have aphasia. Observing their interactions during sessions and the focus group gave me a deep appreciation for the complexity of communication and the challenges people with aphasia face. It was humbling to witness their perseverance, and it made me even more committed to supporting work that could help improve their quality of life.
The technical tasks -- like navigating the British National Corpus and working on data spreadsheets -- were equally enriching. Though at first, some tasks seemed new, I quickly realized how much I was learning about research methodologies, data management, and the precision required in linguistic studies. Transcribing speech for hours on end taught me patience and attention to detail, and it was an opportunity for me to study subtle phonetical features of individual speech production. Also, creating accessible materials for people with aphasia made me understand what kind of help people with aphasia might need.
Overall, this internship gave me more than just new skills -- it broadened my viewpoint in terms of the language sciences and allowed me to perceive the complexity of interdisciplinary areas in neurolinguistics and speech-language pathology. I’m incredibly grateful for the support I received from the team and for the chance to play a small role in research that could help individuals with communication difficulties. It was a summer of learning, growth, and connection, and I’ll carry these lessons with me as I move forward in my studies and career.
I would like to appreciate again every experience, kindness, and warm welcome from everyone with my whole heart, and I wish all the best for the research as well as their personal lives 🥰 “
We are in deep sorrow at the loss of lab member Sebastian
We are in deep sorrow at the loss of lab member Sebastian Bello Lepe, who died on Christmas Day. It was a total pleasure to work with him: always positive and enthusiastic. He remained positive even when the pandemic interrupted our plans for his PhD and amazingly flexible in changing direction as it was clear that we could not recruit participants with stroke for the planned studies. Instead, he conducted secondary analysis of existing data and produced outstanding work on the analysis of pause phenomena in the speech of people with aphasia and those with Alzheimer's disease. Once the restrictions of the pandemic were lifted, he completed a major EEG study on brain electrical responses to grammatical anomalies in older adults and aphasic listeners. He heard very recently that his article reporting the pause analysis in aphasia was accepted for publication in Cortex. We will miss Seb and his energy and enthusiasm, and we will not forget his contributions to the work of the lab.
We are in deep sorrow at the loss of lab member Sebastian Bello Lepe, who died on Christmas Day.
Read moreTae's Tandem! 🪂
The UTILISE team are excited to share that team member, Tae, has completed her skydive!
After a couple of dates were cancelled thanks to classic British summer weather, Tae was finally able to go ahead with the jump, which she faced to raise money for aphasia charity Dyscover.
Her brave feat raised over £1000 for the organisation which supports people living with aphasia. Formerly afraid of heights, her fears were conquered for a fantastic cause, and we’ll be interested to see whether Tae becomes a full extreme-sports convert…
Well done, Tae!!! 👏
BAS Conference - Kerry is our Rising Research Star! 🌟
The UTILISE team have been busy spreading the word about our work at international conferences over the last couple of months.
In September, Kerry presented (twice!) at the British Aphasiology Society (BAS) Conference, which was held in London at UCL Queen Square. She spoke about outcomes of our pilot trial, both qualitative and quantitative, which we ran earlier in the year. We would like to thank all the participants of the pilot trial for their work using the app and for their attendance at focus groups. These participants gave us valuable insight into their experiences and shared their suggestions for improving the app. Kerry presented these insights as part of her presentations, highlighting the importance of developing effective remote therapy options to maximise dose potential for patients.
Kerry Dathan at the British Aphasiology Society Conference with her Rising Research Star award.
We would also like to thank the BAS team for giving us the opportunity to present our work. It was a terrific 3-day event with lots of fascinating talks, including some from service users. UTILISE team member Fern also presented a poster, sharing some outcomes from our in-person therapy trial.
We are very proud that Kerry was awarded the “Rising Research Star” award for her contributions to the conference. She is, without doubt, already a star, and has a bright research career ahead of her.
Well done, Kerry! A true asset to the team.
Dizzying heights for Dyscover - Tae's tandem 🪂
We at UTILISE are excited (and nervous) to tell you all that our fantastic intern, Tae Horsfield, will be jumping from a plane, 10,000ft above the ground, in just over a month to raise money for aphasia charity Dyscover!
Tae is a wonderful person, who always puts others before herself. In her greatest feat of selflessness yet, she has taken on the challenge of a parachute jump, despite being terrified of heights, to bring support to a great cause. Tae has been volunteering for Dyscover, a charity that supports people living with aphasia, for several months. Daily sessions are run by speech and language therapists and volunteers, to provide for support for people living with aphasia as well as their family, friends and carers. They help people to develop their own communication strategies that work for them, and create a sense of community for people who often report feeling isolated as a result of their difficulties with speech, language and communication.
In Tae’s own words:
“One thing I can say is every member at Dyscover I have had the pleasure of meeting is determined to participate in all activities. I hope that I will be able to be as positive, courageous, and determined as the members at Dyscover when I jump out of the plane”.
The UTILISE team will be wishing Tae good weather and good luck on the 27th of July, with our feet planted firmly on the ground! To find out more, visit Tae’s fundraising page here.
Kerry Corley on UTILISE self-managed therapy
We are hugely grateful to the Stroke Association for funding our ongoing research into post-stroke aphasia.
The UTILISE project has been developed with the aim of improving people with aphasia’s ability to produce and understand every-day sentences. We are about to take the exciting next step in our project journey, which involves lending people an iPad that they can use to access our therapy at home. Our work with Therapy Box has made it possible for us to build a version of our therapy which people can use remotely, meaning there is less travel commitment, less expense, and opportunity for people to spend more time doing therapy exercises from the comfort of their own sofa.
We are thrilled to share this Stroke Association video with you, in which our UTILISE PhD researcher, Kerry Corley, explains more about why she is part of UTILISE, and the work that we do. Professor Rosemary Varley, our project lead, and Tony, an individual with aphasia, also talk about why this research is so important.
The Stroke Association would not be able to fund such valuable work without the contributions of donors and the public. To make a donation to the Stroke Association, click here.
Thank you so much to everyone who supports our work!
Fundraising for Aphasia - 2023 Brighton Half Marathon
In February 2023, our UTILISE researcher, Fern, ran the Brighton Half Marathon to raise money for aphasia charity Say Aphasia.
Say Aphasia is a fantastic charity run by people with aphasia, for people with aphasia. Founded by our steering committee member, Colin Lyall, following his stroke in 2013, the charity now has 15 drop-in groups (including a Zoom group) up and running across the UK, from Brighton to Abergavenny to Darlington. These groups offer a place for people with aphasia, whether caused by stroke or other brain injury, to meet people who can relate to their experiences and provide support in the form of community. The first-hand experience of those that run the charity means that there is a unique insight into what people living with aphasia want and need in the months and years that follow the onset of their speech and language difficulties.
So, on a bright and breezy February morning, Fern, her cousin Emily, her friend Lyle, founder of Say Aphasia, Colin Lyall, and several other fundraisers, set off on the 13.1-mile run. Fern and her team managed to raise over £1500 for the charity. The fundraising links are open indefinitely, so see this page if you are interested in making a donation in support of the cause.
Stroke Association Amazing Brains 2023
Jason Parker, stroke survivor, sharing his experience of struggling with mental health after his stroke.
Rosemary, Kerry and Fern from the UTILISE team were very excited to attend the Amazing Brains 2023 event last week, hosted by the Stroke Association.
Kerry Corley and Fern Rodgers from the UTILISE project, in front of Kerry’s award recognition screen, which reads: “I am excited to have a part to play in increasing our knowledge of self-directed computer therapies [for aphasia']. They have a key role in the future of stroke rehabilitation as a leap forward in the amount of therapy people with post-stroke difficulties can access.”
The event centred around the hugely important topic of mental health after stroke. After a significant, life changing event, like a stroke, it is common for people to struggle with feelings of anxiety, depression or anger. This is even more common in people with post-stroke aphasia, many of whom report feelings of isolation, loneliness and loss of confidence. Jason Parker gave a moving and inspirational speech about his first-hand experiences of working through mental health difficulties following his stroke, and how his determination helped him to deal with this experience and get him back to work.
Professor Mark Tarrant, Professor Maggie Lawrence, and Dr Emma Patchwood then spoke about their Stroke Association funded research into post-stroke mental health and the ways in which they are working to reduce the emotional burden experienced by many stroke survivors.
Kerry Corley, Fern Rodgers and Professor Rosemary Varley at Amazing Brains 2023.
We would like to thank the Stroke Association for running such a fantastic event, and for funding the UTILISE research project. We were also thrilled to celebrate our team’s recent funding success too, with Kerry Corley working towards her PhD and Dr Claudia Bruns commencing her post-doctoral fellowship. Without this funding, our work to help people living with aphasia after stroke would not be possible. Difficulty communicating can impact quality of life, and we hope to help.
If you are struggling with your mental health following a stroke, you are not alone. You can visit this webpage for more information, or, you can call the Samaritans on 116 123.