Leonardo F Bonilha
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Neuroscience
A stroke can leave people unable to find or speak words, a condition called aphasia. About 2 million people in the United States live with long-term language problems after stroke.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
aphasia
stroke
language recovery
- Grants
- 4 known grants, through Aug 2030
What they work on
- Test whether adding anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to audio-visual speech therapy improves naming more than sham stimulation, in a randomized Phase II/III trial of people with chronic Broca's aphasia.
- Determine the optimal tDCS dose (1 mA versus 2 mA) in the trial's Phase II portion and make a go/no-go decision on proceeding to a Phase III superiority test.
- Examine how cardiovascular risk factors versus protective factors such as education and multilingualism influence premature brain aging and aphasia severity, using machine-learning brain-age estimates from the C-STAR and ABC@USC datasets.
- Relate premature aging in specific cortical regions and in remote brain networks to language symptoms, and test in longitudinal cohorts whether stroke accelerates brain aging.
- Model how structural and functional brain network integrity, including direct and indirect connections, relates to aphasia, using Connectome-Lesion Symptom Mapping in 199 C-STAR participants.
- Define the finer sub-networks within the dorsal and ventral language streams and identify white matter changes that support recovery after therapy, using data from the POLAR treatment study.
- Run the CLINTRUSC Health Research Core's pilot project program, funding and overseeing small clinical and translational studies that generate preliminary data and foster cross-disciplinary collaboration.
More about the research
Aphasia severity varies widely, and the standard treatment, speech therapy, often brings limited gains. This research asks why some stroke survivors are more impaired than others and how recovery could be improved. It studies brain wiring, brain aging, and brain stimulation. It also includes a leadership role supporting clinical and translational research at the University of South Carolina.
Why it matters
Stroke survivors with chronic aphasia often gain little from speech therapy alone. A definitive trial could show whether adding brain stimulation improves naming, potentially offering a new clinical option. Brain-aging and brain-network markers could help clinicians predict each patient's recovery and personalize therapy. Some markers, such as cardiovascular risk factors linked to brain aging, could point to modifiable targets.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Maria V. Ivanova
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether high-intensity exercise improves language, cognition, movement and emotional well-being in 110 stroke survivors with aphasia, compared with a matched low-intensity exercise control in a randomized trial.
Jerzy P Szaflarski
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Neuroscience
Quantify brain temperature patterns using magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging and thermometry, which reads temperature from the shift between creatine and water signals, and compare treatment-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy, controlled epilepsy, and healthy controls.
Anna Greenwald
Georgetown University, DC·Neuroscience
Test whether visuospatial deficits after right-hemisphere stroke reflect four separable core factors rather than one unitary 'spatial neglect', by giving stroke survivors and matched controls a comprehensive test battery analyzed with factor analysis.
The school
University of South Carolina-Columbia: 22 labs on PI Pages, $277M a year on research, 425 research doctorates a year.
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