Links Between Motor Abilities and Language Ability Deficits in Patients With Post-stroke Aphasia

Aphasia is a language disorder that affects oral and written expression and/or comprehension. It's one of the most disabling consequence of stroke. Nowadays, aphasia rehabilitation is supported by speech therapists and is based on oral and written language, comprehension and expression. However recent studies have shown links between language and motor function (especially tool use). Two domains that share neural substrates (Broca's area, basal ganglia) and that can influence each other.

The aim of this study is to show that a motor training with a tool (pliers) can improve short-term and long-term language abilities of aphasic patients who had a stroke at least 3 months ago.

The investigators hypothesis is that there is a learning transfer between tool use and language abilities in aphasic patients with an inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) lesion caused by a stroke, thanks to their shared neural resources.

Investigators aim to study long and short-time effects of this tool motor training with three experiments:

• E1 will study short-term effects by estimating pre-post effect of a motor training on language abilities. Investigators will experiment different effectors: tool, hand, none (control group); on patients and healthy volunteers.

• E2 will study long-term effects with multiple single-case experimental designs (SCED). Patients will undergo four weeks of on-off design.

• E3 will study long-term effects by estimating the efficiency of an experimental sensorimotor protocol of four weeks, comparing a group of patients with the experimental sensorimotor protocol to a control group of patients