Research Summary
Following a stroke, an individual may experience speech, language, cognitive, or emotional problems. Dr. Hillis’ current research aims to improve the understanding of how language and other cognitive functions are represented and carried out in the brain, how they recover after injury, and how understanding these processes can contribute to evaluation and treatment of stroke and dementia. Specifically, current research studies include the following:
- Stroke Cognitive Outcome and Recovery (SCORE)
- Language Recovery After Stroke
- Cognitive Deficits and Recovery after Right Hemisphere Stroke
Dr. Hillis' current research combines longitudinal task-related and task-free functional imaging and structural imaging from the acute stage of stroke through the first year of recovery, with detailed cognitive and language assessments to improve our understanding how language and other cognitive functions recover after stroke. Her other avenue of research involves novel treatment studies and longitudinal imaging and language studies of Primary Progressive Aphasia. She has published extensively on these topics in journals and textbooks.
Selected Publications
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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS (from >150 total)
Hillis, A.E. (1989). Efficacy and generalization of treatment for aphasic naming errors. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 70, 632-636.
Caramazza, A. & Hillis, A.E. (1991). Lexical organization of nouns and verbs in the brain. Nature, 349,788-90.
Hillis, A.E. & Caramazza, A. (1991). Category-specific naming and comprehension impairment: A double dissociation. Brain, 114, 2081-2094.
Hillis, A.E. & Caramazza, A. (1995). Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying visual and semantic processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 457-478.
Hillis, A.E. & Caramazza, A. (1995). The representation of grammatical categories of words in the brain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 396-407.
Hillis, A.E., Boatman, D., Hart, J. & Gordon, B. (1999). Making sense out of jargon: a neurolinguistic and computational account of jargon aphasia. Neurology, 53, 1813-1824.
Hillis, A.E., Wityk, R.J., Tuffiash, E., Beauchamp, N.J., Jacobs, M.A., Barker, P.B., Selnes, O.A. (2001). Hypoperfusion of Wernickes area predicts severity of semantic deficit in acute stroke. Annals of Neurology, 50, 561-566.
Hillis, A.E., Wityk, R.J., Barker, P.B., Beauchamp, N.J., Gailloud, P., Murphy, K., Cooper, O., Metter, E.J. (2002). Subcortical aphasia and neglect in acute stroke: the role of cortical hypoperfusion, Brain,125, 1094-1104.
Hillis, A.E., Tuffiash, E. & Caramazza, A. (2002). Modality specific deterioration in oral naming of verbs. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 1099-1108.
Hillis, A.E., Wityk, R., Barker, P.B., Caramazza, A. (2003). Neural regions essential for writing verbs. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 19-20.
Hillis, A.E., Oh, S., Ken, L. (2004). Deterioration of naming nouns versus verbs in primary progressive aphasia. Annals of Neurology, 55, 268-275.
Hillis, A.E., Work, M., Breese, E.L., Barker, P.B., Jacobs, M.A. & Maurer, K. (2004). Re-examining the brain regions crucial for orchestrating speech articulation. Brain, 127, 1479-1487.
Hillis, A.E., Newhart, M., Heidler, J., Barker, P.B., Herskovits, E., and Degaonkar, M. (2005). The roles of the visual word form area in reading. NeuroImage, 24, 548-559.
Reineck, L., Agarwal, S. & Hillis, A.E. (2005). The diffusion-clinical mismatch predicts early language recovery in acute stroke. Neurology, 64, 828-833.
Hillis, A.E., Newhart, M., Heidler, J., Barker, P.B., Degaonkar, M. (2005). Anatomy of spatial attention: insights from perfusion imaging and hemispatial neglect in acute stroke. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 3161-7.
Charles, R. & Hillis, A.E. (2005). Posterior Cortical Atrophy: clinical presentation and cognitive deficits compared to Alzheimers Disease. Behavioural Neurology, 16, 15-23.
Hillis, A.E., Heidler-Gary, J., Newhart, M., Chang, S., Ken, L. & Bak, T. (2006). Naming and comprehension in primary progressive aphasia: the influence of grammatical word class. Aphasiology, 20, 246-256.
Newhart, M., Ken, L., Kleinman, J.T., Heidler-Gary, J., & Hillis, A.E. (2007). Neural networks essential for naming and word comprehension. Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, 20, 25-30.
DeLeon, J., Gottesman, R.F., Kleinman, J.T., Newhart, M., Davis, C., Lee, A., Hillis, A.E. (2007) Neural regions essential for distinct cognitive processes underlying picture naming. Brain, 130, 1408-22.
Heidler-Gary, J. & Hillis, A.E. (2007). Distinctions between the dementia in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis with Frontotemporal Dementia and the dementia of Alzheimer''s Disease. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
Philipose, L.E., Gottesman, R.F., Newhart, M.; Kleinman, J.T.; Herskovits, E.H.; Pawlak, M.A., Marsh, E.B.; Davis, C.; Heidler-Gary, J.; Hillis, A.E. (2008). Neural regions essential for reading and spelling of words and pseudowords. Annals of Neurology. 481-492.
Cloutman, L., Gottesman, R., Chaudhry, P., Davis, C., Kleinman, J.T., Pawlak, M., Herskovits, E.H., Kannan, V., Lee, A., Newhart, M., Heidler-Gary, J., Hillis, A.E. (2008)Where (in the brain) do semantic errors come from? Cortex. [Epub ahead of print]
Medina, J., Kannan, V., Pawlak, M., Kleinman, J.T., Newhart, M., Davis, C., Heidler-Gary J.E., Herskovits,
E.H., Hillis, A.E. (2008) Neural substrates of visuospatial processing in distinct reference frames: evidence from unilateral spatial neglect. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. [Epub ahead of print].
Cloutman, L., Gingis, L., Newhart, M., Davis, C., Heidler-Gary, J., Crinion, J., Hillis, A.E. (in press). A neural
network critical for spelling. Annals of Neurology.
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