Pete Winiarski is a best selling author and was the CEO of Win Enterprises prior to his stroke in 2023.  Pete joined one of our aphasia book club last year and has inspired all of us with his motivation and discipline in working on his recovery from severe aphasia and apraxia of speech.

On Friday, October 24, Pete gave a talk to the students in the Clinical Connections class. This class was meant to give trainees (PhD students and postdoctoral fellows)  a better understanding of various clinical populations. Pete was invited to tell his story.

He was charming, vibrant, funny, warm– a really incredible and fun guy to listen to.  He seemed to enjoy himself, despite the fact that his talk was massively effortful even after hours of practice. And somehow he remembered and repeated every single person’s name in the room!!

In addition to dedicating himself to his language recovery and working daily on homework using apps and with help from his wife, Pete also rides his bike and lifts weights regularly at the gym. Pete started learning to play the guitar a few months after his stroke.

We are lucky to have him in our book clubs and are grateful to him for sharing his story!

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Dick Marshall was a long time member of our UConn Aphasia Groups. Aphasia made it hard for him to communicate but it didn’t keep him from constantly cracking jokes and having a great time. Even if you didn’t understand the joke, exactly, HIS laugh made us laugh!

He has been sorely missed since he passed in January of 2022 but his family have kept his memory alive. Each year they host a corn hole tournament, charging for entry, and they donate all of the proceeds to our aphasia programming fund. These funds pay for books for our aphasia book clubs, binders and materials for our language groups, and for a luncheon at the end of the fall semester. They also supplement some of the special events we offer including theater trips, basketball games, special trainings on technology, and newsletters written for group members.

This year’s event, held on the first weekend of October was their most successful yet and they raised nearly $2,500. We are so grateful to them for these donations. Aphasia tends to result in isolation. People want to hide away after a stroke. Our aphasia groups provide a bridge back to those critical social networks and funding makes it possible to provide several opportunities to practice first with support! THANK YOU very much to the Larson Family, the Bentley Family and all who contributed!!!

Kaila Cote capped off her first year of her PhD program with a poster presentation at the Nordic Aphasia Conference held in Uppsala, Sweden. Publication coming soon!

Louisa Suting is in the final year of her PhD program and is using resting state neuroimaging to understand changes in the language network before and after intensive aphasia treatment. Before she started, she conducted a scoping review to understand the current state of the science and today it was published in Aphasiology!  Congratulations Louisa! Check it out here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02687038.2025.2466833

This year, at our aphasia groups party, group members were tasked with a deductive reasoning assignment to figure out the mystery of :

We had a blast as always and got in some good communication practice as well. Our students went well ABOVE and BEYOND this year in their planning. Check out the video here.

Undergraduate, Allison Shane and PhD student Portia Washington were selected to share their work at the Clinical Aphasiology Conference in Hawaii. Allison’s work looked at how the language of people with aphasia changed before and after a training session. She analyzed their at-home language.  Portia’s work was a joint project between the Aphasia Rehab Lab and the Brain and Language Lab looking at whether it matters if people with aphasia are trained in the evening or in the morning. (Spoiler: It does)

This UConn Today article came out last summer. I forgot to post it but it has some good information about how stroke and aphasia impact the whole family. This is rarely acknowledged, but so critical!  If you know a family member who would benefit from talking to others in their shoes, please send them our way!

We celebrated the end of the semester with a hot cocoa bar, pizza, treats and a visit from Jonathan the Husky. Wishing everyone a restful holiday and a peaceful and healthy 2024!

Group members with aphasia, family members, and students came out to watch the women Huskies play against Southern Connecticut State University at Gampel this afternoon. We were thrilled to have excellent seats where we could see everything including Coach Geno working with the women during time outs.

The Academy of Aphasia’s yearly conference took place in Reading, UK this year. Amanda Wadams, PhD, presented the results of her dissertation: Therapeutic Effect of Metacognitive Treatment for People withAphasia: A Pilot Study.  

Anna Barnes, MA presented the results of her MA thesis: Environmental Enrichment for People with Aphasia.