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!

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.

ASLTIP "Therapy Talks"

Professor Rosemary Varley at the ASLTIP “Therapy Talks” event (31/03/2022)

The UTILISE team are very grateful to the Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice (ASLTIP) group for having us at their Therapy Talks event last week!

Professor Rosemary Varley, principal investigator of the UTILISE project, delivered a talk titled: “What’s new in sentence therapy for aphasia? “I don’t know””.

She gave a whistle-stop introduction to construction grammar, and spoke of how this theory informs our novel behavioural intervention targeting sentence rehabilitation in post-stroke aphasia.

Construction grammar suggests that we are able to store and access groups of words as single units, particularly if these phrases or sentences are “high frequency” (used often), for example: “I don’t know”.

This explains how someone with severe agrammatic expressive aphasia may be still be able to produce some grammatically correct utterances amidst otherwise syntactically disordered speech.

Using this idea of frequency, we are hoping to improve the accessibility and flexibility of these chunks in post-stroke aphasia.

“What’s new in sentence therapy for aphasia? “I don’t know””

Dr Anna Volkmer at the ASLTIP “Therapy Talks” event (31/03/2022)

Our UCL colleague, Dr Anna Volkmer, also delivered a terrific, and topical, presentation about Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), which is a language-led dementia, called: ““Will you still need me when I’m 65?” Dementia, language and speech and language therapy interventions”.

Anna raised the importance of taking a bespoke, person-centred approach to speech and language therapy.

For more of Anna’s work, see her recently published article: “Principles and philosophies for speech and language therapists working with people with primary progressive aphasia: an international expert consensus”.