PLORAS: Big CATCUS Brain
About the project
The PLORAS study, predicting language outcome and recovery after stroke is a research programme funded by the Wellcome Trust at University College London.
The research is developing new ways to use information from brain scan images and language assessments to predict how well individuals with aphasia, a language disorder, are likely to recover. The next step is to see if the predictions will work using clinical brain scans (which patients have in their local hospitals soon after admission with stroke) to predict how well individuals might recover with speech and language therapy. If this is possible, use of imaging could help to inform decision making on the most appropriate form of rehabilitation for each individual patient.
The Big CACTUS project collected language outcome data on 278 individuals with post stroke aphasia following computer therapy, usual care or attention control. The investigator of the Big CACTUS project, Dr Rebecca Palmer, is collaborating with the PLORAS investigator, Professor Cathy Price, to invite Big CACTUS participants to agree for the PLORAS team to obtain their existing clinical brain scans and share their Big CACTUS therapy outcomes in order to help make and test predictions about language recovery with therapy.