GLASS PROJECT
Reverse Engineering of The Brain
Aphasia is a language disorder often resulting from stroke, traumatic brain injury, or other neurological conditions which disrupts an individual's capacity to comprehend, formulate, and articulate language. Aphasia and other language disorders can be understood better by neural network mapping of EcoG data to gain deeper insights into the neural processes underlying speech perception and production. The Final Reflective paper highlights my personal experience that sparked interest in this topic along with my experiences that play a role towards achieving this goal, breaking down each of them to show their importance in creating a solution to allow aphasic patients to better communicate with others
I have been interested in studying aphasia since my first year of college after an unfortunate incident, where my cousin got a brain injury that left him unable to communicate. He was diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia, as he can still comprehend what is being said to him but cannot communicate his thoughts back. Seeing his frustration and the frustration of his family as they try to understand him in a different way, pushed me to look deeper into the topic to understand the cause of aphasia and how to help my cousin and others like him. Using the knowledge I have acquired over my four years at NYU, how can I help him communicate with others and create an intervention for the social isolation he is experiencing even if he is unable to speak?