Clinical neuroscience and language disorders
Research aims
The Clinical Neuroscience and Language Disorders (CNLD) Research Group uses an interdisciplinary, multi-methods approach to:
- Understand the neural and cognitive bases of developmental and acquired disorders related to language and cognition
- Improve the diagnosis, assessment, management and treatment of these disorders
Research themes
The group consists of:
- An acquired disorders research unit – the Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit (NARU)
- A developmental disorders research unit – the Child and Adolescent Talk Research Unit (CHAT-RU)
Considerable added value comes from taking an integrated view of developmental and acquired disorders, and many research themes are shared across the units. These include a shared focus on:
- Language impairments, such as those seen in specific language impairment (SLI), aphasia, dementia and children with pragmatic language impairment or autism
- Cognition, including semantically-driven verbal and non-verbal behaviour in aphasia and dementia, and underlying memory deficits in developmental disorders
- Conversation, in particular the use of conversational data to provide a method of investigating the everyday presentation and impact of disorders such as pragmatic language impairments in children, and aphasia and dementia in adults
- Longitudinal studies, including the tracking of the developmental trajectories of children and young people with SLI, and changes over time in people with dementia or aphasia
- Intelligibility of speech, including the study of children with atypical use of speech sounds and speech perception of other forms of unfamiliar speech signals
- Plasticity, learning and intervention studies, including studies of learning and neuroplasticity using computer-based modeling, behavioural studies and neuroimaging; and intervention studies for people with acquired or developmental disorders, including randomized control trials and case series design studies
Research methods
The group benefits from the use of convergent methodologies including:
- Neuropsychology
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Speech therapy assessment and intervention methods
- Neuroimaging
- Linguistics
- Conversation analysis
- Computer science
Research funding
The group’s research is currently supported by grants from, among others, the MRC, ESRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, NIHR, Nuffield Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, Wellcome Trust, Stroke Association, British Academy, Royal Society.
Research collaborations
The group’s work falls squarely within the cross-cutting themes of the:
Members of the group are involved in research collaborations with other University of Manchester colleagues both within and beyond the School of Psychological Sciences, as well as with colleagues at other universities in the UK, Europe, Japan, the USA, South America, Australia and South Africa, among others.
The group also has excellent links with local speech and language therapists, schools and hospitals. These links are an integral part of the group’s excellent record of translational research, allowing new findings in pure research to be quickly and smoothly transferred into relevant and effective clinical and educational applications.
