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Background and Aim: Many key problems in autistic children are related to executive dysfunction. This dysfunction is usually occurred due to structural and functional dissociation between brain regions. So neurofeedback can be used as a new treatment procedure in improving children's executive function through modifying brain waves but behavioral changes are usually reflection of long-term changes in the brain level. Therefore the purpose of this study is to investigate the overall effect of neurofeedback training and behavioral effects caused by adding occupational therapy based on cognitive rehabilitation.
Materials and Methods: Single system (A-B-A-B+C-A) design was used in this study. Participants were 2 children with autism spectrum disorder who completed 41 sessions during the study. They received neurofeedback intervention alone (B) during 20 sessions and in the following 12 sessions neurofeedback with occupational therapy (B+C). In this study, Wisconsin card sorting and tower of london tests were used for collecting information on children,s executive functions.
Results: According to the obtained results, the effect size of neurofeedback training on executive function was high for both participants. The rate of shifting attention was improved as one of the executive function items after adding occupational therapy and also the increasing effect of neurofeedback in planning was maintained.
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that neurofeedback can improve executive function in autistic children and the effect of neurofeedback can be more obvious if occupational therapy will be added. But gaining more significant behavioral changes after receiving occupational therapy needs more sessions.

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Background and Aim: “Executive function” is a term describing the processes required for conscious control of thought, emotion, and action that have centered role in management of one's day-to-day life. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between executive function and performance on selected linguistic tasks in persons with aphasia (PWA) and left frontal lobe lesions.

  

Materials and Methods : Subjects were 12 right-handed, left hemisphere stroke patients and 12 normal adults as control group. Farsi aphasia test were administered to determine of persence and type of aphasia, as well as auditory comperehension(AC) and naming scors. Wisconsin Card Sort Test(WCST) and Tower Of London(TOL) were used to assess the executive function skills of planning, working memory, mental flexibility, self monitoring, inhibition irrelevant behavior, shifting between concept and action.

 

Results: The control group scored higher than the individuals with aphasia on the executive function tests (P<0/001). In WCST there was not a significant correlation between the AC and category completed (CC) as well as preservative errors(PE). There was a significant correlation between the AC and total errors (TE) (p=0/02) . There was a significant correlation between naming and CC (p=0/01) and TE (p=0/005). There was not a significant correlation when comparing the naming and PE (p=0/194). A comparison between naming scores and TOL showed a significant correlation (p=0/009). There was not a significant correlation between AC and TOL (p=0/113).

  

Conclusion: This study showed that individuals with aphasia have cognition disorder, other than language disorder. If they have a good naming ability, patients ' performance ontestsof executive function will be better.

 

Keywords: Aphasia, Executive function, Language function, Naming, Auditory comprehension, Persian Language