Cohort 
2020

Petronilla Battista, PhD

Neuropsychologist

We need to improve the awareness and knowledge of the benefits of a coordinated response to care.

Current Work

Petronilla is a neuropsychologist with clinical and research experience in cognitive, language, and communication disorders in patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA). 

Personal Hero

Roger Schutz

Words of Strength

Curiosity

Vision

Petronilla believes we need to improve the awareness and knowledge of the benefits of a coordinated response to care. Dementia care, as well as chronic disease management incorporating a multidisciplinary team, could be supported by the development of appropriate practice guidelines.

Strategy

Petronilla is focused on the impact of linguistic, social, and cultural factors on the diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) to facilitate our predictions about disease susceptibility and outcome. She's also working on delivering programs for older adults with PPA conditions resulting in severe and complex presentations.

Impact

Petronilla’s role is to develop new tests for the assessment of complex linguistic and cognitive disorders. The knowledge about human linguistic/cultural aspects will also be useful for her in dealing with the implementation of tailored language treatments through advanced therapeutic technologies.

Motivation

Many older adults do not receive an early diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) or adequate care due to the great skepticism about the potential benefit offered by non-pharmacological interventions. People with PPA aren’t usually referred to speech-language or neuropsychological services.

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