Maria Kambanaros

Cyprus University of Technology · Department of Rehabilitation Sciences

Background and Objectives: The aim of the study was to explore the experiences of family carers of people with dementia (PWD) in Cyprus and to describe the impact of dementia on family carers using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework as a model to interpret the findings. Research Design and Methods...

Research Objectives To explore the views of people who live with chronic stroke and aphasia on their potential involvement as research partners. Design Qualitative study: semi-structured interviews. Participatory research model with a Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) partner: a person with chronic stroke-induced aphasia. Setting On line inter...

This paper describes a serious game based on a knowledge transfer model using deep reinforcement learning, with an aim to improve the caretakers’ knowledge and abilities in post-stroke care. The iTrain game was designed to improve caregiver knowledge and abilities by providing non-traditional training to formal and informal caregivers who deal with...

The impact of aphasia on the everyday life of Greek-speaking people with aphasia (PWA) is often underestimated by rehabilitation clinicians. This study explores the adaptation and psychometric properties of the Greek (GR) version of The Aphasia Impact Questionnaire-21 (AIQ-21-GR) to address this issue. The aim of this study is to determine the reli...

Background: People with language problems following stroke (aphasia) benefit from speech and language therapy. Optimising speech and language therapy for aphasia recovery is a research priority. Objectives: The objectives were to explore patterns and predictors of language and communication recovery, optimum speech and language therapy intervention...

Background: Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) is the active partnership between researchers, patients and laypeople in the process of creating research. PPI in stroke aphasia research aims to ensure equal opportunities for informed decision-making and guarantee democratic representation of patient partners within the research team. Yet, little...

Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is a degenerative condition characterized by the progressive loss of language function. In PPA, aphasia is the most prominent deficit at onset. On the other hand, memory deficits are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The first aim of the study was to establish differences on neuropsychological testing and c...

The term developmental language disorder (DLD) refers to the condition in which a child fails to achieve the speech and language milestones that are expected for his/her chronological age. The disorder is often linked to a series of add-on effects such as learning difficulties, trouble with socializing, problematic behaviour and low self-esteem. Ac...

Background: Evidence-based assessments for people with aphasia (PWA) in Greek are predominantly impairment based. Functional communication (FC) is usually underreported and neglected by clinicians. This study explores the adaptation and psychometric testing of the Greek (GR) version of The Scenario Test. The test assesses the everyday FC of PWA in...

Service Organization/Quality Improvement and Patient-Centred Outcomes

The study aims to explore the lifestyle profile of adult individuals with cardiovascular and endocrine diseases in Cyprus. Age and sex-specific analyses were applied. A representative sample of the general adult population was recruited during 2018-2019 using stratified sampling among the five government-controlled municipalities of the Republic of...

Background: We require high-quality information on the current burden, the types of therapy and resources available, methods of delivery, care pathways and long-term outcomes for people with aphasia. Aim: To document and inform international delivery of post-stroke aphasia treatment, to optimise recovery and reintegration of people with aphasia. Me...

Background: Collation of aphasia research data across settings, countries and study designs using big data principles will support analyses across different language modalities, levels of impairment, and therapy interventions in this heterogeneous population. Big data approaches in aphasia research may support vital analyses, which are unachievable...

Research on language in Cyprus is relatively recent. The first wave emphasized the sociolinguistic situation of the local language variety/dialect, which was supplemented by studies concerning attitudes towards Cypriot Greek vs. Standard Modern Greek. This was followed up by more systematic investigations into the grammar of Cypriot Greek: Other th...

Background and Purpose Optimizing speech and language therapy (SLT) regimens for maximal aphasia recovery is a clinical research priority. We examined associations between SLT intensity (hours/week), dosage (total hours), frequency (days/week), duration (weeks), delivery (face to face, computer supported, individual tailoring, and home practice), c...

Background. In an effort to boost aphasia recovery, modern rehabilitation, in addition to speech and language therapy (SALT), is increasingly incorporating noninvasive methods of brain stimulation. The present study is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of two paradigms of neuronavigated repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS): (i...

Background Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) is the active partnership between researchers and patients. PPI in stroke aphasia research aims to ensure equal opportunities for informed decision-making and guarantee democratic representation in citizen control of PPI projects. Yet, little is known about the factors that hinder and/or promote the a...

Background: Traditionally, people with aphasia (PWA) are treated with impairment-based language therapy to improve receptive and expressive language skills. In addition to language deficits, PWA are often affected by some level of working memory (WM) impairments. Both language and working memory impairments combined have a negative impact on PWA's...

Background and aim: There is a large body of literature on the use of questionnaires to describe the impact of aphasia on stroke survivors’ quality of life (QOL). The findings demonstrate robust evidence for the severe effects of communication deficits on social integration and well-being for people with aphasia (PWA) post stroke. Traditionally, PW...

Poor sleep is a relatively common condition with possibly serious adverse health consequences. Lack of sleep affects the endocrine, immune, and nervous systems. In Cyprus, there is no information about the quality of sleep in the population. The goal of this study was to assess the quality of sleep in the Cypriot population and evaluate its associa...

This study investigates the acquisition of grammatical gender in Heritage Greek as acquired by children (6–8 years of age) and adolescents (15–18 years) growing up in Adelaide, South Australia. The determiner elicitation task from Varlokosta (2005) was employed to assess the role of morphological and semantic cues when it comes to gender assignment...

Chronic aphasia is linked to poor functional recovery, depression, and social isolation. In the exploration of the above factors the role of aphasia communication groups has evolved. Aphasia communication groups for stroke survivors with chronic aphasia and their communication buddies are gaining clinical importance. Communication buddies can be fa...

This study investigates the acquisition of grammatical gender in Heritage Greek as acquired by children (6–8 years of age) and adolescents (15–18 years) growing up in Adelaide, South Australia. The determiner elicitation task from Varlokosta (2005) was employed to assess the role of morphological and semantic cues when it comes to gender assignment...

Background and Purpose The factors associated with recovery of language domains after stroke remain uncertain. We described recovery of overall-language-ability, auditory comprehension, naming, and functional-communication across participants’ age, sex, and aphasia chronicity in a large, multilingual, international aphasia dataset. Methods Individ...

Variation involving a switch between pre- and post-verbal placement of pronominal object clitics in a single syntactic environment within a language is unexpected. The rationale why this would not be expected is clear: Languages pattern as either proclitic or enclitic with respect to object clitic placement, possibly allowing one or the other optio...

Background: Intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) administered to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (LDLPFC) has been shown to advance working memory (WM) abilities. At the same time, WM training is widely used to enhance learning associated with low language skills. An emerging area of research is that of applying cortical stimulation...

The increasing number of children with Language Impairment (LI) globally, and practitioners’ limited knowledge and specialized training can have a serious effect on foreign language learning and development. The present study proposes useful and meaningful practices in the area of raising awareness and alerting a wide range of stakeholders in the f...

Objective To examine the adherence to the Mediterranean diet in the adult general population of Cyprus and assess its relationship with multi-morbidity. Design A representative sample of the adult population of Cyprus was selected in 2018–2019 using stratified sampling. Demographics, Mediterranean diet, smoking and physical activity, as well as th...

Background Multimorbidity is defined as the co-existence of two or more chronic conditions. As life expectancy is increasing so does the prevalence of multimorbidity. Our aim was to estimate the prevalence of multimorbidity in Cyprus and identify the most prevalent diseases. Methods A representative sample of n = 1140 individuals over 18 years old...

Background: Quality of Life (QoL) questionnaires are used to describe the impact of aphasia on stroke survivors' life. People with aphasia (PWA) are traditionally excluded from research, potentially leading to a mismatch between the factors chosen in the tools and the realistic needs of PWA. The purpose of this review was to determine the direct i...

The aim of the present study is to determine the language profile of two cases with Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), semantic variant PPA (svPPA) and non-fluent-agrammatic PPA (nfvPPA).

Introduction Knowledge about factors associated with multi-morbidity in a given population has important implications for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis strategies. Objectives To examine the association of Mediterranean diet with multi-morbidity in the adult general population of Cyprus. Methods A representative sample of n = 114...

The present study reports the findings of a 10-consecutive day neuronavigated continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) treatment over the right pars triangularis (pTr) for one individual with chronic global aphasia post-stroke. Baseline language and quality of life measures were collected twice prior to treatment, one day post-treatment, and then...

Purpose: Speech and language pathology (SLP) for aphasia is a complex intervention delivered to a heterogeneous population within diverse settings. Simplistic descriptions of participants and interventions in research hinder replication, interpretation of results, guideline and research developments through secondary data analyses. This study aimed...

Purpose: Speech and language pathology (SLP) for aphasia is a complex intervention delivered to a heterogeneous population within diverse settings. Simplistic descriptions of participants and interventions in research hinder replication, interpretation of results, guideline and research developments through secondary data analyses. This study aimed...

Background: Speech and language therapy (SLT) benefits people with aphasia following stroke. Group level summary statistics from randomised controlled trials hinder exploration of highly complex SLT interventions and a clinically relevant heterogeneous population. Creating a database of individual participant data (IPD) for people with aphasia aims...

Objective Given the underlying frontal-basal ganglia circuit neuropathogenesis of HIV-infected individuals, it is surprising that little is reported about potential language deficits as part of their higher cognitive dysfunctional profile. This study aims to elucidate whether HIV-positive individuals have linguistic impairments that may originate f...

Background: Speech and language therapy (SLT) benefits people with aphasia following stroke. Group level summary statistics from randomised controlled trials hinder exploration of highly complex SLT interventions and a clinically relevant heterogeneous population. Creating a database of individual participant data (IPD) for people with aphasia aims...

Background: Noninvasive brain stimulation techniques such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are used to facilitate the recovery of language in stroke patients with aphasia. Although rTMS is a promising therapeutic method, further investigations are needed to expand the knowledge base about the use of the technique in stroke-ind...

Objective: For people with aphasia (PWA) and their significant others, narratives are intricately intertwined with quality of life, culture, and social participation. This paper reports stories told by bilingual people with aphasia (bPWA), describing the events or consequences of a stroke on their lives. Patients and methods: Six participants wi...

Cyprus: Theory and practice for children with developmental language disorders

The present study reports the findings of a 10-day neuronavigated continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over the right pars triangularis for two individuals with chronic aphasia after a single left hemispheric stroke. Baseline language and quality of life measures were collected prior to the treatment study, post-treatment and at 3-month follow...

There is a growing body of research on language impairment in bilingual speakers with neurodegenerative diseases. Evidence as to which language is better preserved is rather inconclusive. Various factors seem to influence language performance, most notably age of acquisition, level of proficiency, immersion and degree of exposure to each language....

Background: Speech and language therapy (SLT) interventions for people with aphasia are complex-for example, interventions vary by delivery model (face-to-face, tele-rehabilitation), dynamic (group, 1-to-1) and provider. Therapists tailor the functional relevance and intervention difficulty to the individual's needs. Therapy regimes are planned at...

The language abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are highly variable. More insight is needed into the mechanisms that underlie co-morbid language impairments (LI) in children with ASD (henceforth, ASD–LI) across complex lexical and/or grammatical phenomena, particularly for languages beyond English. The present study tested th...

Behav Neurol. 2018; 2018: 4831647. Published online 2018 Feb 27. doi: 10.1155/2018/4831647 PMCID: PMC5848101 PMID: 29576817 Neuropsychological Features of Multiple Sclerosis: Impact and Rehabilitation Lambros Messinis,corresponding author 1 Panagiotis Papathanasopoulos, 2 Mary H. Kosmidis, 3 Grigorios Nasios, 4 and Maria Kambanaros 5 Author informa...

The aim of this study is to profile the cognitive–linguistic performance of a male child (P.I.) with 22q11 deletion syndrome (22q11DS). Specifically, receptive and expressive language performance and nonverbal IQ (NVIQ) are described at two different time points—when P.I. was 6 and 10 years of age, respectively. Using case-based methodology, P.I.’s...

The clinical significance of sentence repetition tasks (SRTs) for assessing children's language ability is well-recognized. SRT has been identified as a good clinical marker for children with (specific) language impairment as it shows high diagnostic accuracy levels. Furthermore, qualitative analysis of repetition samples can provide information to...

The present study examines whether bilectal Greek Cypriot educators are able to identify dialectal (Cypriot Greek) elements superimposed on the standard language (Standard Modern Greek) in a written variety-judgment task. By doing so, (meta)linguistic skills of bilectal teachers from Cyprus were put to the test and later compared to the results of...

Grammatical markers are not uniformly impaired across speakers of different languages, even when speakers share a diagnosis and the marker in question is grammaticalized in a similar way in these languages. The aim of this work is to demarcate, from a cross-linguistic perspective, the linguistic phenotype of three genetically heterogeneous developm...

Imageability is a psycholinguistic variable that indicates how well a word gives rise to a mental image or sensory experience. Imageability ratings are used extensively in psycholinguistic, neuropsychological, and aphasiological studies. However, little formal knowledge exists about whether and how these ratings are associated between and within la...

Comparative research on aphasia and aphasia rehabilitation is challenged by the lack of comparable assessment tools across different languages. In English, a large array of tools is available, while in most other languages, the selection is more limited. Importantly, assessment tools are often simple translations and do not take into consideration...

Research in speakers of closely related varieties has shown that bilectalism and non-standardization affect speakers’ perception of the variants that exist in their native languages in a way that is absent from the performance of their monolingual peers. One possible explanation for this difference is that non-standardization blurs the boundaries o...

Background: Aphasia affects a third of stroke survivors equating to an estimated 50,000 people in the UK and 5.6 million worldwide annually. Due to its impact on social functioning, emotional wellbeing, hospital discharge destination and returning to work, effective and efficient rehabilitation interventions are vital. Systematic review evidence ba...

The cognitive benefits of bilingualism have an impact on the processing mechanisms that are active during the acquisition process in a way that results in language variation. Within bilingual populations, the notion of “language proximity” is also of key importance for deriving variation. Certain sociolinguistic factors can invest the process of la...

Individuals with complex communication problems have multiple needs that frequently cannot be met by speech and language clinicians, but they may require the intervention and consultation of highly specialized professionals. The challenge to provide advance support and consultation to clinicians for such cases has led to the design and development...

Background: Clinicians globally recognize as exceptionally challenging the development of effective intervention practices for bi- or multilingual children with specific language impairment (SLI). Therapy in both or all of an impaired child's languages is rarely possible. An alternative is to develop treatment protocols that facilitate the transfe...

Very little is known about diagnosing specific language impairment (SLI) in children who are exposed daily to a dialect (community language) and a standard variety (school instruction). The research reported here examines the specificity and sensitivity of language tests used so far to evaluate language performance in the context of diglossia (Cypr...