Cynthia K. Thompson

Cynthia K. Thompson is a neurolinguist and cognitive neuroscientist most known for her research on the brain and language processing and the neurobiology of language recovery in people with aphasia. She served as a member of the faculty at Northwestern University (NU) for 30 years as a Distinguished Ralph and Jean Sundin Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. She also directed the Aphasia and Neurolinguistics Research Laboratory (ANRL) and the Center for the Neurobiology of Language Recovery (CNLR) and is a Distinguished Ralph and Jean Sundin Professor Emerita at NU. She also served as Chair of the Research and Scientific Affairs Committee for the American Speech, Language, Hearing Association (ASHA) from 1998 to 2001 and Chair of the Clinical Aphasiology Program in 2001. For the Academy of Aphasia she served on the Board of Governors from 2003 to 2007 and again from 2011 to 2017, and as Treasurer from 2011 to 2017.

Thompson is a fellow of the Mesulam Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center and the Buehler Center on Aging at NU and the Institute for the Advanced Study and Communication Process (University of Florida). She is a fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and received honors of the Association, the highest award conferred by ASHA in 2013.

Research Thompson's research has focused on the neurobiology of language, particularly sentence processing in both neurotypical adults and those with aphasia resulting from stroke and neurodegenerative disease.

Thompson has used both linguistic and psycholinguistic accounts of normal language processing to predict breakdown and recovery patterns in patients and to develop treatment for people with sentence processing impairments associated with aphasia. Her research team has used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and on-line eye tracking to investigate normal and disordered neurocognitive processing mechanisms and to chart patterns of language recovery.

Thompson and her team found that healthy people engage a predominantly left hemisphere (LH) neural network for sentence processing. In large-scale aphasia treatment studies, they found that when the LH is damaged, right hemisphere (RH) regions are recruited to support treatment-induced recovery of sentence comprehension and production, attesting to RH neuroplasticity and adaptivity in rebuilding language processes.

Thompson coined the Argument Structure Complexity Hypothesis (ASCH) and the Complexity Account of Treatment Efficacy (CATE), developed Treatment of Underlying Forms (TUF) for sentence processing impairments in aphasia, and identified behavioral and neural variables associated with language recovery and neuroplasticity, including white matter tract integrity and neural activation during rest (resting-state fMRI). She also developed diagnostic tools for assessing language disorders in adults with aphasia, including the Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences (NAVS), the Northwestern Anagram Test (NAT), the Northwestern Naming Battery (NNB), the Northwestern Assessment of Verb Inflection (NAVI), She has authored over 200 journal articles and 40 book chapters.

Awards and honors 1998 – Fellow, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 2007 – Martin E. and Gertrude G. Walder Award for Research Excellence, Northwestern University 2007 – Editor's Award, American Journal of Speech and Language Pathology 2011 – Endowed Investiture Ralph and Jean Sundin Professorship, Northwestern University 2013 – Honors of the Association, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association