Global aphasia: An innovative assessment approach

Objective: To provide an alternative language comprehension assessment strategy for patients unable to be tested with traditional verbally/behaviorally based methods. Design: Event-related brain potentials were recorded from three midline scalp locations to visually and aurally computer-presented sentences, 50% of which were semantically appropriate and 50% semantically incongruous. Setting: A rehabilitation hospital. Patient: A 21-year-old man with a traumatic brain injury. Results: The patient exhibited brain response patterns to aurally presented congruous and incongruous sentences indicative of intact semantic processing capabilities. These findings resulted in reinstatement of individualized rehabilitative intervention, with a successful outcome. Conclusions: This innovative technique provides new opportunities for assessing intellectual function in noncommunicative patients who were patients previously unable to be tested. (C) 1999 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.