This talk will provide an overview of Dr. Tijana Simic's research to date on treatment for post-stroke aphasia. Dr. Simic will discuss her prior work identifying various predictors of post-stroke language recovery, including attentional/executive control ability, initial responsiveness to cueing and steep early improvements with repeated practice, and the efficacy of intensive compared to distributed treatment schedules. She will also discuss preliminary findings from current work in her lab on how cue-type impacts treatment outcomes, using novel computational modelling methods. To close, she will briefly discuss the future directions of my work, including the potential for applications to brain-computer interfaces and wearable devices as compensatory technologies to support communication in daily life.

Dr. Tijana Simic is an Assistant Professor and early-career researcher of Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) at the University of Toronto (UofT), where she directs the Language Rehabilitation and Cognition (LaRC) lab. She is also an Affiliate Scientist at both the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, Unity Health Toronto and at KITE-Toronto Rehab, University Health Network, and a registered speech-language pathologist, with 17 years of research and clinical experience in the assessment and treatment of acquired language disorders. Her research investigates behavioural mechanisms driving treatment-related improvements in aphasia, with the goal of improving treatment efficacy and transfer, especially for those who do not currently benefit from therapy.