Dr Sonia Brownsett

Dr Brownsett is a Speech Pathologist and neuroscientist. She trained and worked as a Speech and Language therapist in the UK prior to commencing a PhD in Clinical Neuroscience at Imperial College, London. Her doctoral research used fMRI to investigate interactions between domain-general and language-specific brain networks during the performance of challenging language tasks in healthy older adults and in the recovery of post-stroke language difficulties (aphasia). Then as a co-investigator on the National Institute of Health Research funded Listen-In trial led by UCL, London, she developed and tested a therapy application that utilised gamification technology to sustain user motivation and engagement in high-dose aphasia therapy (Listen-In).

Her specific research interests include:

• Identifying the extent and progression (both behavioural and neurological) of language difficulties in people living with brain injuries other than stroke.
• Understanding how general cognitive brain networks (domain- general) interact with task-specific brain networks to modulate behaviour and recovery.
• Identifying neurobiological predictors of recovery of aphasia.
• Understanding how premorbid brain health impacts the recovery of language after a stroke.
• The upregulation, using both behavioural and neurostimulation techniques, of domain-general neural systems to augment language learning both in healthy older adults and people with aphasia.
• The reorganisation of language, and the neural systems underpinning language, following neurosurgery for brain tumours and epilepsy.
• The optimal dose of aphasia therapy and early phase dose investigations.
• The organisation of verbal semantic systems within the brain.
• The use of technology to optimise communication for people living with aphasia.

Within the Queensland Aphasia Research Centre, she leads the 'Imaging Predictors' and the 'Aphasia techHub' flagship groups. She is also the lead postdoctoral fellow within the Neurobiological Predictors Theme of the NHMRC CRE in Aphasia Recovery and Rehabilitation. Her neurobiological predictors projects aim to understand how a range of neural markers can be used to provide more reliable predictors of language recovery after damage to the brain.

The Aphasia techhub lead (Aphasia Tech Hub) supports those living with aphasia to use and access technology. Technological advances and guidance is not typically communication accessible. Her team, including those with a lived experience of aphasia, adapt and recreate communication accessible guidance for using technology, and are keen to work with industry to support their accessibility in this way.

Sonia has significant experience involving people with aphasia and members of the public in the development of research studies and therapy trials. She works closely with those with a lived experience of aphasia to ensure that the research is fit for purpose. She has received multiple awards for her working involving those with a lived experience of aphasia in research, including as a team member recipient of the National Health and Medical Research Council Consumer Engagement Award (2023), the Consumer & Community involvement in Research Award. Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, University of Queensland (2022), and the Patient, Carer and Public Involvement Winner: UK Stroke Forum Conference (2017).

She is a working group member of the living stroke guidelines (Living stroke guidelines), a world-first initiative that aims to ensure that guidance on the clinical management of stroke is constantly updated with the best available evidence.