Background
Cognitive-communication disorders are common in TBI. They include difficulties in speaking, understanding, reading, writing, conversation skills and participation. These deficits result from underlying cognitive impairments in attention, memory, executive functions, linguistic skills and information processing. Not rarely, persistent communication difficulties may greatly affect the everyday life after a TBI. Language comprehension plays an essential role in functional communication. 

The aim of our current research is to find out what kind of cognitive-communication disorders patients with TBI have and how these disorders are connected with diffuse tensor imaging (DTI) measures of white matter tracts. All participants will be evaluated by a speech-language pathologist, psychologist, and neuroradiologist (DTI-imaging) during one month. We are currently collecting data of 50 cases with moderate – severe diffuse TBI and 30 healthy controls. 

Objectives
We studied the differences between TBI and healthy participants groups in seven different language comprehension subtests with performance and performance time. We will present a subgroup where language comprehension data is already available. 

Method
Language comprehension data of 38 participants (12 male and 26 female) with TBI, aged 19-53 (M = 35) years was used. The control group consisted of 24 healthy participant matched by age, education and gender. All participants were administered a battery of subtests of language comprehension. The groups were compared with nonparametric tests (Mann-Whitney U-test) across the seven different language subtests. We analyzed both performance and performance time.

Results & Conclusion
Language comprehension performance was reduced in five of seven subtests for the TBI participants compared to the control group. Speed of performance was slower in two of seven subtests for TBI participants. Patients with TBI seem to have difficulties in multiple areas of language comprehension. To what extent non-linguistic cognitive deficits explain these findings and how they correlate with injuries in white matter tracts of the TBI subjects will be analyzed next.

Cognitive-communication skills after traumatic brain injury: a pilot study of language comprehension