• Education:BSc in Greek Literature (major in Linguistics), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2005)
    MA in Linguistics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2008)
    MSc in Neuroscience, Language and Communication, University College London (2010)
    PhD in Linguistics, University College London (2015)
  • Website or Lab: Aphasia Research Lab
  • Phone:617-353-2706
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Scholarly, Research, and/or Practical Interests

Maria Varkanitsa is a research assistant professor at Sargent College and the assistant scientific director of the Center for Brain Recovery (CBR). Her research focuses on the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying language processing and recovery in individuals with aphasia, particularly following stroke. She integrates methods from theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neuroimaging to investigate language processing and the interaction between linguistic and non-linguistic cognition post-stroke aphasia. A key aspect of her work involves exploring predictors of language recovery, utilizing both clinical data and advanced neuroimaging techniques like resting-state functional connectivity. Additionally, she is engaged in identifying biomarkers, such as white matter integrity and cerebral small vessel disease burden, to predict treatment outcomes and optimize rehabilitation strategies for people with aphasia.

Selected Publications

Lists of published works: Google Scholar 

  • *Falconer, I., *Varkanitsa, M., & Kiran, S. (2024). Resting-state brain network connectivity is an independent predictor of responsiveness to language therapy in chronic post-stroke aphasia. Cortex, 173, 296-312.
  • Varkanitsa, M., Peñaloza, C., Charidimou, A., & Kiran, S. (2023). Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Burden: An Independent Biomarker for Anomia Treatment Responsiveness in Chronic Stroke Patients With Aphasia. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 104(10), 1630-1637.
  • Varkanitsa, M., Godecke, E., & Kiran, S. (2023). How much attention do we pay to attention deficits in poststroke aphasia? Stroke, 54, 55-66.
  • Varkanitsa, M. & Kiran, S. (2022). Understanding, facilitating and predicting aphasia recovery after rehabilitation. International journal of speech-language pathology, 1-12.
  • Billot, A., Lai, S., Varkanitsa, M., Braun, E.J., Rapp, B., Parrish, T.B., Higgins, J., Kurani, A.S., Caplan, D., Thompson, C.K., Ishwar, P., Betke, M. & Kiran, S. (2022). Multimodal neural and behavioral data predict response to rehabilitation in chronic post-stroke aphasia. Stroke, May, STROKEAHA121036749.
  •  Varkanitsa, M., Peñaloza, C., Charidimou, A., Caplan, D., & Kiran, S. (2020). White Matter Hyperintensities Predict Response to Language Treatment in Poststroke Aphasia. Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, 34(10), 945-953.
  • Varkanitsa, M., & Caplan, D. (2018). On the association between memory capacity and sentence comprehension: Insights from a systematic review and meta-analysis of the aphasia literature. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 48, 4–25.

Honors and Awards

  • Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Development Grant, Boston University (2023)
  • Dudley Allen Sargent Research Fund award, Boston University (2019)
Departments
Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences
Positions
Faculty and Research

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