About

Maya L. Henry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin and is the director of the Aphasia Research and Treatment Lab. She received her bachelor’s degree from The University of Texas at Austin and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Dr. Henry completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California's Memory and Aging Center, a leading research center that investigates atypical dementias such as frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. In 2014, she joined the faculty in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Her clinical and research interests are in the nature and treatment of aphasia caused by stroke and neurodegenerative disease. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, her research has explored cognitive and neural bases of spoken and written language as well as the rehabilitation of language impairments associated with primary progressive aphasia.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Medicine
• Cognitive psychology
• Audiology
• Psychiatry
• Neuroscience
• Political Science
• Natural Language Processing
• Speech recognition
• Artificial Intelligence
• Sociology
• Medical education
• Clinical psychology
• Linguistics
• Applied psychology
• Physical therapy
• Nursing
• Pathology
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• Combined treatment for primary progressive aphasia (Schaffer Mendez et al., 2026)

  figshare ASHA Publications · 2026-04-21

  otherOpen accessSenior author

  <b>Purpose:</b> Individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) face negative psychosocial repercussions, yet few studies have investigated counseling for this population. In a prior study, a novel intervention encompassing script training and aphasia-modified cognitive behavioral therapy was piloted with an individual with PPA, yielding promising results. The purpose of this study is to determine the acceptability and feasibility of this intervention for individuals with different PPA subtypes, with secondary aims of understanding preliminary treatment outcomes and evaluating the sensitivity of selected psychosocial measures.<b>Method:</b> Nine participants with PPA were recruited (three with nonfluent/agrammatic variant, three with logopenic variant, and three with semantic variant). Acceptability was measured using a posttreatment questionnaire. Feasibility was examined via intervention adherence, independent practice engagement, retention, assessment completion, interrater reliability, and fidelity ratings. Speech-language outcomes were evaluated via hypothesis testing using simulation analysis from pre- to posttreatment for all participants and from pretreatment to follow-up time points for six participants. Counseling outcomes at posttreatment were measured via psychosocial scales and analyzed using Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests.<b>Results: </b>Findings indicate that this treatment is acceptable and feasible. All participants demonstrated significant improvement in speech-language performance following treatment, with five participants demonstrating significant improvement up to 1 year posttreatment. Despite promising qualitative evidence regarding counseling outcomes, a sensitive quantitative measure of psychosocial functioning was not identified.<b>Conclusions:</b> Pairing tailored speech-language interventions with counseling for individuals with heterogeneous PPA phenotypes is acceptable and feasible. Preliminary outcomes indicate positive communication findings and that alternative psychosocial measures may be beneficial in a future efficacy trial.<b>Supplemental Material S1. </b>LRCT treatment steps.<b>Supplemental Material S2. </b>Comprehensive psychosocial assessment data.Schaffer Mendez, K., Evans, W. S., Wauters, L. D., Dutcher, C. D., Philburn, C., &amp; Henry, M. L. (2026). A combined speech-language and counseling intervention for primary progressive aphasia: Acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary outcomes. <i>Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. </i>Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2026_JSLHR-25-00390

  PublisherDOI

• Combined treatment for primary progressive aphasia (Schaffer Mendez et al., 2026)

  figshare ASHA Publications · 2026-04-21

  otherOpen accessSenior author

  <b>Purpose:</b> Individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) face negative psychosocial repercussions, yet few studies have investigated counseling for this population. In a prior study, a novel intervention encompassing script training and aphasia-modified cognitive behavioral therapy was piloted with an individual with PPA, yielding promising results. The purpose of this study is to determine the acceptability and feasibility of this intervention for individuals with different PPA subtypes, with secondary aims of understanding preliminary treatment outcomes and evaluating the sensitivity of selected psychosocial measures.<b>Method:</b> Nine participants with PPA were recruited (three with nonfluent/agrammatic variant, three with logopenic variant, and three with semantic variant). Acceptability was measured using a posttreatment questionnaire. Feasibility was examined via intervention adherence, independent practice engagement, retention, assessment completion, interrater reliability, and fidelity ratings. Speech-language outcomes were evaluated via hypothesis testing using simulation analysis from pre- to posttreatment for all participants and from pretreatment to follow-up time points for six participants. Counseling outcomes at posttreatment were measured via psychosocial scales and analyzed using Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests.<b>Results: </b>Findings indicate that this treatment is acceptable and feasible. All participants demonstrated significant improvement in speech-language performance following treatment, with five participants demonstrating significant improvement up to 1 year posttreatment. Despite promising qualitative evidence regarding counseling outcomes, a sensitive quantitative measure of psychosocial functioning was not identified.<b>Conclusions:</b> Pairing tailored speech-language interventions with counseling for individuals with heterogeneous PPA phenotypes is acceptable and feasible. Preliminary outcomes indicate positive communication findings and that alternative psychosocial measures may be beneficial in a future efficacy trial.<b>Supplemental Material S1. </b>LRCT treatment steps.<b>Supplemental Material S2. </b>Comprehensive psychosocial assessment data.Schaffer Mendez, K., Evans, W. S., Wauters, L. D., Dutcher, C. D., Philburn, C., &amp; Henry, M. L. (2026). A combined speech-language and counseling intervention for primary progressive aphasia: Acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary outcomes. <i>Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. </i>Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2026_JSLHR-25-00390

  PublisherDOI

• A Combined Speech-Language and Counseling Intervention for Primary Progressive Aphasia: Acceptability, Feasibility, and Preliminary Outcomes

  Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · 2026-04-21

  articleSenior author

  PURPOSE: Individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) face negative psychosocial repercussions, yet few studies have investigated counseling for this population. In a prior study, a novel intervention encompassing script training and aphasia-modified cognitive behavioral therapy was piloted with an individual with PPA, yielding promising results. The purpose of this study is to determine the acceptability and feasibility of this intervention for individuals with different PPA subtypes, with secondary aims of understanding preliminary treatment outcomes and evaluating the sensitivity of selected psychosocial measures. METHOD: Nine participants with PPA were recruited (three with nonfluent/agrammatic variant, three with logopenic variant, and three with semantic variant). Acceptability was measured using a posttreatment questionnaire. Feasibility was examined via intervention adherence, independent practice engagement, retention, assessment completion, interrater reliability, and fidelity ratings. Speech-language outcomes were evaluated via hypothesis testing using simulation analysis from pre- to posttreatment for all participants and from pretreatment to follow-up time points for six participants. Counseling outcomes at posttreatment were measured via psychosocial scales and analyzed using Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests. RESULTS: Findings indicate that this treatment is acceptable and feasible. All participants demonstrated significant improvement in speech-language performance following treatment, with five participants demonstrating significant improvement up to 1 year posttreatment. Despite promising qualitative evidence regarding counseling outcomes, a sensitive quantitative measure of psychosocial functioning was not identified. CONCLUSIONS: Pairing tailored speech-language interventions with counseling for individuals with heterogeneous PPA phenotypes is acceptable and feasible. Preliminary outcomes indicate positive communication findings and that alternative psychosocial measures may be beneficial in a future efficacy trial. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.31836103.

  PublisherDOI

• The Progressive Aphasia Communication Toolkit (PACT): A Strengths-Based Approach to Multidomain Evaluation for Intervention

  Alzheimer s & Dementia Diagnosis Assessment & Disease Monitoring · 2025-12-04

  preprintOpen access

  INTRODUCTION: Assessments of communication for people living with primary progressive aphasia (PwPPA) remain limited. This work describes the development of a strengths-based, ecologically valid instrument - the Progressive Aphasia Communication Toolkit (PACT). METHODS: This work consisted of five experiments: two to develop (Experiments 1 and 2) and three to pilot (Experiments 3 to 5) a novel instrument for PPA. Ninety-five individuals worldwide contributed to this work: 80 researchers and clinicians, nine PwPPA, and six care partners. RESULTS: Experiments 1 and 2 yielded a four-scale instrument comprising quantitative and qualitative feedback. Experiments 3 to 5 resulted in structural refinement and digitization of the tool, revealed strong PwPPA and care partner acceptance of the PACT, and demonstrated high inter-rater agreement for general observability (91%) and perceived communication strength (85%). DISCUSSION: Current findings indicate that the PACT provides a holistic profile of communication strengths for PwPPA and can guide clinicians in developing functional therapeutic targets. Highlights: Instruments to evaluate communicative competence in PwPPA are centered on diagnosis and impairment.Documentation of communication strengths has direct implications for person-centered care and behavioral intervention.The PACT was developed in partnership with expert clinicians, researchers, PwPPA, and care partners.The PACT captures functional, real-world communication ability through a structured conversation and provides a shared framework to describe communicative competence across disciplines.Preliminary findings support that the PACT is ecologically valid, minimally burdensome, preferred by PwPPA and care partners, and clinically feasible for clinicians and researchers.Future work will serve to develop cultural-linguistic adaptations of the PACT and investigate the instrument's validity, reliability, and feasibility as an assessment procedure for PwPPA in a larger sample.

  PublisherDOI

• Development and classification accuracy of an automated cognitive screening tool combining working memory and connected speech tasks for early detection of cognitive impairment in primary care

  Alzheimer s & Dementia Translational Research & Clinical Interventions · 2025-07-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  INTRODUCTION: Cognitive screening to detect mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia in primary care settings has proven to be a challenging task. The ideal solution would be a brief, yet sensitive, tool appropriate for use with individuals from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds that requires limited time and expertise from clinic staff. The purpose of this project was (1) to develop an automated cognitive screening tool incorporating cognitive and speech/language data using machine learning techniques for potential use in primary care settings and (2) to compare its classification accuracy to an established cognitive screening measure. METHODS: Participants were 53 cognitively normal and 51 cognitively impaired older adults. Each completed a working memory (WM) and four speaking tasks, followed by a second administration of WM to investigate the added utility of practice effects. Bayesian additive regression trees were used to test nine models, and the Quick Mild Cognitive Impairment screen was administered as a comparator. RESULTS: The top feature set consisted of both administrations of the WM task and a personal narrative task and achieved a cross-validated classification accuracy (area under the receiver operating characteristics curve) of 0.84, which was slightly better than the comparator. DISCUSSION: Combining WM and acoustic and linguistic variables derived from connected speaking tasks discriminated cognitively normal from cognitively impaired groups with a high degree of accuracy. Highlights: Working memory and speaking tasks were used for detection of cognitive impairment.This combination distinguished cognitively normal from impaired older adults.This automated tool may overcome barriers to cognitive screening in primary care.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Utilization of resting-state electroencephalography spectral power in convolutional neural networks for classification of primary progressive aphasia

  Neuroimage Reports · 2025-02-15 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  We investigated relative power spectral density (PSD) in primary progressive aphasia (PPA) in delta, theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands in eyes open and closed resting-state electroencephalography (EEG). Our aims were to assess whether discernible differences could be observed between each PPA variant and to determine the utility of PSD for PPA classification when used as input to a convolutional neural network (CNN). Findings in the current study were similar to previous studies in logopenic PPA, with a significant increase in relative PSD in delta and theta bands and a significant reduction in the beta band (consistent with oscillatory slowing). We did not observe a significant increase in power for lower frequency bands or a reduction of power in higher frequency bands for semantic or nonfluent PPA, in contrast to what has been previously reported. In semantic PPA, evidence pointed to oscillatory speeding, not the slowing that was previously reported in a single-case study. In nonfluent PPA, spectral power fell between logopenic and semantic PPA, suggesting there is oscillatory slowing but to a lesser extent than logopenic PPA. The CNN was relatively successful in distinguishing PPA from healthy controls (F1 = 0.851). The CNN did not perform as well on four-way classification (lvPPA, svPPA, nfvPPA, controls; F1 = 0.586) but was significantly above chance. These results are promising and suggest that resting-state EEG may prove useful as a biomarker for PPA diagnosis. Potential factors underlying the differences between the findings of the current study and previous work are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Associations between dementia symptoms and caregiver and relationship health: A prominent role for speech and language

  Journal of Alzheimer s Disease · 2025-05-21 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Background Dementia is a significant public health issue globally. People with dementia (PWD) exhibit symptoms in multiple domains (e.g., cognition, emotion, motor, speech/language) that can vary in their impact on the caregiver and the PWD-caregiver relationship. Objective We assessed the relative impact of various dementia symptoms on caregiver health and well-being and on the PWD-caregiver relationship using a broad sampling of PWD symptoms and caregiver/relationship outcome measures. Methods Data were analyzed from 54 primary caregivers of PWDs who completed seven questionnaires assessing caregiver health and well-being and PWD-caregiver relationship quality. An exploratory factor analysis of these questionnaires revealed two primary factors: (a) General Distress (anxiety, burden, depression, general health, loneliness), and (b) Relationship Quality (interpersonal closeness, relationship satisfaction). Caregivers also rated nine categories of PWD symptoms (memory, executive functions, speech/language, visual/spatial, motor, changes in behavior, sleep, medical/sensory, activities of daily living). Results Greater caregiver General Distress was associated with greater PWD speech/language and sleep symptoms. Lower caregiver Relationship Quality was associated (at trend, p &lt; 0.10, levels) with greater PWD speech/language and activities of daily living symptoms. Correlations with the seven individual caregiver outcome measures revealed that speech/language symptoms were the most robust predictors (correlated with five measures), followed by sleep and activities of daily living symptoms (correlated with two measures), and memory, visual/spatial, and motor symptoms (correlated with one measure). Conclusions Findings highlight the profound adverse effects that PWD speech and language deficits may have on caregivers and underscore the importance of addressing these deficits in dementia care.

  PublisherDOI

• Application of machine learning and temporal response function modeling of EEG data for differential diagnosis in primary progressive aphasia

  Scientific Reports · 2025-08-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by progressive decline in speech and/or language. There are three PPA subtypes with distinct speech-language profiles. Early diagnosis is essential for optimal provision of care but differential diagnosis by PPA subtype can be difficult and time consuming. We investigated the diagnostic utility of a novel electroencephalography (EEG)-based biomarker in conjunction with machine learning. Individuals with semantic, logopenic, or nonfluent/agrammatic variant PPA and healthy controls (n = 10 per group) listened to a continuous narrative while EEG responses were recorded. The speech envelope and linguistic features representing core language processes were extracted from the narrative speech and temporal response function (TRF) modeling was used to estimate the neural responses to these features. Although TRF modeling has shown promise for clinical applications, research is lacking regarding its diagnostic utility in populations like PPA. This study sought to provide preliminary evidence to address this gap. The resulting TRFs for channel Cz were used as input to machine learning algorithms for classification of PPA vs. healthy controls, three-way classification by PPA subtype, classification of a single PPA subtype relative to the other two (e.g., semantic vs. logopenic/nonfluent variant), and pairwise classification by PPA subtype. F1 scores were highest for the latter tasks (F1's from 0.73 to 0.74), with better-than-chance classification in all tasks. Additional analyses determined that the TRF beta weights significantly improved classification over preprocessed EEG waveforms alone for all but one task (PPA vs. healthy controls). Our preliminary findings demonstrate the potential utility of this approach for differential diagnosis of PPA, warranting further investigation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Discriminating nonfluent/agrammatic and logopenic PPA variants with automatically extracted morphosyntactic measures from connected speech

  Cortex · 2024-02-01 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An international core outcome set for primary progressive aphasia (COS‐PPA): Consensus‐based recommendations for communication interventions across research and clinical settings

  Alzheimer s & Dementia · 2024-11-13 · 16 citations

  reviewOpen access

  INTRODUCTION: Interventions to treat speech-language difficulties in primary progressive aphasia (PPA) often use word accuracy as a highly comparable outcome. However, there are more constructs of importance to people with PPA that have received less attention. METHODS: Following Core Outcome Set Standards for Development Recommendations (COSSTAD), this study comprised: Stage 1 - systematic review to identify measures; Stage 2 - consensus groups to identify important outcome constructs for people with PPA (n = 82) and care partners (n = 91); Stage 3 - e-Delphi consensus with 57 researchers. RESULTS: The systematic review identified 84 Outcome Measurement Instruments. Core outcome constructs identified included: (1) Participate in conversations with family and friends, (2) get words out, (3) be more fluent, (4) convey a message by any means, and (5) understand what others are saying. Researchers were unable to reach a consensus on measurement instruments. DISCUSSION: Further work is required to develop appropriate measurement instruments that address all core outcome constructs important to key stakeholders. HIGHLIGHTS: We introduce new symptom-led perspectives on primary progressive aphasia (PPA). The focus is on non-fluent/agrammatic (nfvPPA) and semantic (svPPA) variants. Foregrounding of early and non-verbal features of PPA and clinical trajectories is featured. We introduce a symptom-led staging scheme for PPA. We propose a prototype for a functional impairment scale, the PPA Progression Planning Aid.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Establishing Evidence-based Treatment for Speech and Language in Primary Progressive Aphasia

  NIH · $3.3M · 2017–2023

• NIH Grant F32DC010945

  NIH · $124k · 2013

• Rehabilitation of speech and language in primary progressive aphasia

  NIH · $565k · 2014–2018

• NIH Grant F31DC009145

  NIH · $50k · 2009

Frequent coauthors

• Bruce L. Miller

  University Memory and Aging Center

  195 shared

• Maria Luisa Gorno‐Tempini

  University of California, San Francisco

  192 shared

• William W. Seeley

  University of California, San Francisco

  105 shared

• Maria Luisa Mandelli

  Politecnico di Milano

  97 shared

• Benno Gesierich

  69 shared

• Lea T. Grinberg

  University of California, San Francisco

  65 shared

• Gil D. Rabinovici

  University Memory and Aging Center

  60 shared

• Eric J. Huang

  Broad Center

  53 shared

Labs

• Aphasia Research and Treatment Lab (ARTlab)PI

Education

• M.S., Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences

  The University of Arizona

  2003

• B.S., Linguistics/Anthropology

  The University of Texas at Austin

  1999