A REVIEW OF THE BOOK BY M. G. KHRAKOVSKAYA "APHASIA. AGNOSIA. APRAXIA. REHABILITATION TECHNIQUES" (2017)
A review of the book by M. G. Khrakovskaya Afaziya. Agnoziya. Apraksiya. Metodiki vosstanovleniya [Aphasia. Agnosia. Apraxia. Rehabilitation Techniques]. SPb.: Nestor-Istoriya, 2017, 309 pp.“Aphasia. Agnosia. Apraxia. Rehabilitation Techniques” by M.G. Khrakovskaya appeared in print in 2017. The author is a speech and rehabilitation therapist, a neuropsychologist with over 50 years of practical clinical and scholarly experience and a PhD in Psychology. She has also authored special courses Aphasiology and Neuropsychology in Practical Speech Therapy for undergraduate students of special pedagogy feculties and for participants of advanced training courses. Ms. Khrakovskaya was the initiator and, since 1989, has been supervisor of the on-going St. Petersburg Workshop “Neuropsychology and Speech Therapy. Theory and Practice”.The monograph opens with a review of various aspects and modern trends of rehabilitation practices in both Russia and worldwide (Chapter I), and then goes on to present the author’s own research results and guidelines in methods of teaching: Writing Skills Rehabilitation (Chapter II); Specifics of Thinking Disorders and Rehabilitation in Patients with Aphasia (Chapter III); An Original Approach to Speech System Rehabilitation in Patients with Semantic Aphasia (Chapter IV); Calculation Abilities Rehabilitation in Patients with Acalculia (Chapter V); and Gnostic Functions Rehabilitation in Patients with Occipitoparietal Focal Lesions (Chapter VI). The author also shares her original experience of the development and application of a specific method for quantitative assessment of neuropsychological examination results of focal brain lesion patients. The original assessment system, suggested by the author, is skillfully combined with a set of diagnostic tests for examining aphasia, agnosia, and various types of apraxia patients in consistence with A. Luria’s approach. This opens up a way to measure the severity of a disorder both based on individual symptoms of a syndrome and on the syndrome in its totality, as well as to gage positive changes in the structure of the damage throughout the therapy. The authored techniques in methodology make it possible to activate the deficient functional system as a whole by capitalizing on its relatively unaffected segments instead of concentrating on restoration of the damaged segment, as is traditional for other rehabilitation training methods. This involves activation of the properties established and automated in adults and specific features pertaining to each of the targeted psychological functions - writing, calculation, mentation, and speech in patients with semantic aphasia. All the proposed techniques imply “by-passing” the central defect in order to address the relatively intact or easier recoverable psychological function levels. The rehabilitation methods are aimed at creating, and capitalizing on, conditions wherein the affected functions are activated by means of patients gradually progressing from simpler to increasingly more complicated tasks. These “gentle” techniques have helped a majority of the author’s patients to restore their speech and other psychological functions and return to normal professional activities.