Fast ForWord®

Fast ForWord® is a computer-based method developed by Scientific Learning (USA). The program Fast ForWord® was developed by leading in the field of speech disorders world-renowned scientists: doctors Michael Merzenich, Bill Jenkins (University of California, San Francisco), Paula Tallal, Steven Miller (Rutgers University).

DO YOU NEED IT?

Fast ForWord® is prescribed to patients with:

• Speech disorder occurred after a stroke or brain injury (motor, sensory, complex aphasia);
• Reading or writing disorders occurred after a stroke (traumatic brain injury);
• Mental disorders (consequences of stroke, traumatic brain injury);
• Deteriorating of attention concentration;
• Stuttering;
• Memory impairment.

WHAT PROBLEM DOES IT SOLVE?

Speech impairment in stroke or brain injury refers to focal symptomatology. Disturbance of speech can proceed as a type of aphasia.

With the lesion of the dominant hemisphere cortex a person loses the ability to partially or fully use speech to express thoughts and feelings and (or) to understand an audible speech.

Usually reading and writing disorders also appear. When the temporal region is affected, sensory aphasia occurs. Clinical variants of it are extremely diverse — from a complete inability to understand even the simplest words and sentences to small disorders (the inability to distinguish nuances, differentiate words similar in sounding).

If the lower sections of the left frontal and lower sections of the parietal lobes of the brain are damaged, right-handers may experience motor aphasia. The patient loses ability to speak because of the disturbance of complex speech motor commands. Such patients are characterized by silence, they reluctantly join a conversation, respond in monosyllables. Usually, there are combined speech disorders in stroke in the form of complex aphasia.

In the majority of patients with speech impairment after a stroke (traumatic brain injury), the efficiency of processing auditory signals has been impaired — a person does not always correctly perceive speech addressed to him, although his hearing is normal. Traditional sessions with a speech therapist are often ineffective in this case.

The Fast ForWord® program is a physiological brain training that restores its correct functioning. The essence of training is that the speed with which the brain perceives sounds gradually increases. Having received the experience of distinguishing sounds with different acoustic characteristics or single phonemes, a person who has suffered a stroke (traumatic brain injury) begins to perceive speech accurately and quickly.

Fast ForWord® does not teach to pronounce sounds, but restores the natural physiological mechanisms that generate speech.

The Fast ForWord® program is created for each patient individually, taking into account his problems and abilities.

Multiple repetitions of «complex» phonemes, slowed down initially and accelerated right up to normal speech speed, restore the speech center of the brain and increases the cortex zone responsible for language functions.

Sessions are aimed at restoring phonemic hearing, contribute to improving memory, increasing concentration, restoring fine motor skills.

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?

In many countries, children, who begin to speak different languages, ​​use typical combinations of vowel and consonant sounds like «da-da-da» and «ba-ba-ba» in their babble. The first words that children say, also usually consist of such combinations: “mama”, “papa” etc.

For a patient with speech disorders distinguishing of the similar sounds («b», «p», «d», «t», etc.) becomes a big problem. The ear of people with brain damage can not process the typical combinations of consonants and vowels that are quickly pronounced. Patients do not have time to hear the beginning of the syllable or how sounds change inside the syllable.

This inability to cope with the elementary task violates all aspects of sound perception. A person spends a lot of time and effort trying to distinguish sounds and to understand which exactly word sounded. This becomes the cause of an impairment of understanding of speech, the pronunciation aspect of speech, reading and writing. But this problem can be solved with the help of Fast ForWord®.

WHAT IS THE NOVELTY AND DIFFERENCE FROM OTHERS?

«Neurological clinic of Dr. Yatsenko» is the only official representative of the company Scientific Leaning in Ukraine. This program is successfully used in the clinic to correct speech neuropsychic problems in people suffered a stroke or craniocerebral trauma.

HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?

Fast ForWord® is an exciting computer game with original characters and scenes. The patient hears sounds through the headphones and performs instructor’s tasks.

WHAT ARE THE RESULTS?

The first results of using Fast ForWord® were published in the Science Magazine in January 1996. Patients with speech disorders advanced in their language development in average for 1 year and 10 months in six weeks of training.

Fast ForWord® normalizes the work of the human brain.

Researchers from Stanford University performed a brain scan of patients with dyslexia (reading disability) before and after the Fast ForWord® course. It showed that after the course of sessions the work of the brain of all the participants of the study was normalized. Patients’ attention and ability to its concentration got improved.

The program Fast ForWord® restores not only a phonemic hearing, but also the ability of the brain to process information in general. The program trains the ability of the brain to manage time.

HOW MUCH TIME DOES IT TAKE?

Regular sessions are needed 3-5 times a week. Course consists of 10-12 30-minute sessions.

There are no age restrictions.