
Ajay.Halai@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk
01223 767655
I am a Principal Investigator (MRC Career Development Award 2021-2026) and Senior Research Associate.
My research group is focused on understanding diagnosis and prognosis in stroke aphasia using a multi-modal approach (behavioural, neuroimaging, non-invasive brain stimulation, computational modelling and machine learning).
The research is important and it spans basic scientific discover through to clinical translation, which can impact: 1) our theoretical understanding of how cognitive processes recovery after brain injury, 2) predictive value for prognosis, both for the patients and clinical rehabilitation, and 3) the implementation of novel individualised therapeutics.
Biography
I completed a BSc and MSc at the University of York (psychology and cognitive neuroscience, respectively), followed by a cross discipline PhD (MRC Capacity-Building) at the University of Manchester, combining psychology with neuroimaging. I then moved toward applied research under the mentorship of Prof Matthew Lambon Ralph at the University of Manchester and MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. I started my own lab in 2021 but I continue to collaborate with a multidisciplinary team, where I use convergent methods to investigate recovery and/or decline following brain disorder.

Ingram, R.U., Ocal, D., HALAI, A. D., Pobric, G., Cash, D., Crutch, S.J., Yong, K., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2024) Graded Multidimensional Clinical and Radiologic Variation in Patients With Alzheimer Disease and Posterior Cortical Atrophy, Neurology, 103(4) [Open Access]

HUMPHREYS, G.F., HALAI, A. D., BRANZI, F.M., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2024) The left posterior angular gyrus is engaged by autobiographical recall not object-semantics, or event-semantics: Evidence from contrastive propositional speech production, Imaging Neuroscience, March 06, 2024 [Open Access]

RAMANAN, D., HALAI, A. , GARCIA-PENTON, L., Perry, A.G., Patel, N., Peterson, K., Ingram, R., Storey, I., Cappa, S., Catricala, E., PATTERSON, K., ROWE, J., Garrard, P., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2023) The Neural substrates of transdiagnostics cognitive-linguistic heterogeneity in primary progressive aphasia, Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, 15, 219 [Open Access]

HALAI, A. , CHANG, Y., LAMBON RALPH, M. (2023) Distance-dependent distribution thresholding in probabilistic tractography, Human Brain Mapping, 44(10):4064-4076 [Open Access]

HALAI, A. , Zhao, Y., Cox, C., LAMBON RALPH, M. (2023) Using in-vivo functional and structural connectivity to predict chronic stroke aphasia deficits, Brain, 146(5):1950-1962 [Open Access]

LAMBON RALPH, M., HALAI, A. (2023) Reply: Are Recovery of Fluency and Recovery of Phonology Antagonistic?, Brain, 146(7):e52-e54 [Open Access]

FRISBY, S., HALAI, A. , Cox, C.R., LAMBON RALPH, M.A., Rogers, T.T. (2023) Decoding semantic representations in mind and brain, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 09 Jan 2023, :S1364-6613(22)00323-0 [Open Access]

HALAI, A. D., De Dios, P.B., Stefaniak, J.D., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2022) Efficient and effective assessment of deficits and their neural bases in stroke aphasia, Cortex, 155: 333-346 [Read More]
SCHUMACHER, R., HALAI, A. , LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2022) Attention to attention in aphasia – elucidating impairment patterns, modality differences and neural correlates, Neuropsychologia, 177:108413 [Open Access]

Krieger-Redwood, K., Steward, A., Gao, K., Wang, X., HALAI, A. , Smallwood, J., Jefferies, E. (2022) Creativity in verbal associations is linked to semantic control, Cerebral Cortex: bhac405 [Open Access]

Gao, Z., Zheng, L., Krieger-Redwood, K., HALAI, A. , Marguiles, D.S., Smallwood, J., Jefferies, E. (2022) Flexing the principal gradient of the cerebral cortex to suit changing semantic task demands , eLife 11:e80368. [Open Access]

Thomson, H.E., Noonan, K.A., HALAI, A. D.M, Hoffman, P., Stampacchia, S., Hallam, G., RICE, , G.E., De Dois Perez, B., LAMBON RALPH, M.A., Jefferies, E. (2022) Damage to temporoparietal cortex is sufficient for impaired semantic control, Cortex, 156:71-85 [Open Access]

Souter, N.E., Wang, X., Thompson, H., Krieger‑Redwood, K., Halai, A. D., LAMBON RALPH, M.A., de Schotten, M.T., Jefferies, E (2022) Mapping lesion, structural disconnection, and functional disconnection to symptoms in semantic aphasia, Brain Structure and Function, 227(9), 3043-3061 [Open Access]

Alyahya, R.S.W., LAMBON RALPH, M.A., HALAI, A. , Hoffman, P. (2022) The cognitive and neural underpinnings of discourse coherence in post-stroke aphasia., Brain Communications, 14 Jun 2022, 4(3):fcac147 [Open Access]

Gillespie, D.C., HALAI, A. D., West, R.M., Dickie, D.A., Walters, M., Broomfield, N.M. (2022) Demographic, clinical and neuroimaging markers of post-stroke emotionalism: a preliminary investigation, Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 21 Mar 2022, 436:120229 [Open Access]

Schumacher, R., HALAI, A. D., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2022) Assessing executive functions in post stroke aphasia – utility of verbally based tests, Brain Communications, 26 Apr 2022, 4(3):fcac107 [Open Access]

Patel, N., Peterson, K.A., Ingram, R.U., Storey, I., Cappa, S.F., Catricala, E.,, HALAI, A. , Patterson, K.E., LAMBON RALPH, M.A., ROWE, J.B., Garrard, P. (2021) A ‘Mini Linguistic State Examination’ to classify primary progressive aphasia, Brain Communications, 21 Dec 2021, 4(2):fcab299 [Open Access]

ALYAHYA, R.S.W., HALAI, A. D., Conroy, P., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2021) Content word production during discourse in aphasia: Deficits in word quantity, not lexical-semantic complexity, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 33 (12): 2494–2511 [Open Access]

Rounis, E., HALAI, A. , Pizzamiglio, G., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2021) Characterising factors underlying praxis deficits in chronic left hemisphere stroke patients, Cortex, 29 May 2021, 142:154-168 [Open Access]

Alyahy, R.S.W., Conroy, P., HALAI, A. D., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2021) An Efficient, Accurate and Clinically-Applicable Index of Content Word Fluency in Aphasia, Aphasiology, 36(8):921-939 [Open Access]

Alyahya, R.S.W., HALAI, A. D., Conroy, P., Lambon Ralph, M.A. (2020) Mapping psycholinguistic features to the neuropsychological and lesion profiles in aphasia, Cortex, 124, 260-273 [Read More]
Schumacher, R., Bruehl, S., HALAI, A. , LAMBON RALPH, M.A (2020) The verbal, nonverbal and structural bases of functional communication abilities in aphasia, Brain Communications, 2(2):fcaa118 [Open Access]

Ingram, R.U., HALAI, A. D., Pobric, G., PATTERSON, K., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2020) Graded, multi dimensional intragroup and intergroup variations in primary progressive aphasia and post stroke aphasia, Brain, 143(10):3121-3135 [Open Access]

ZHAO, Y., HALAI, A. , LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2020) Evaluating the granularity and statistical structure of lesions and behaviour in post-stroke aphasia, Brain Communications, 19 May 2020, 2(2):fcaa062 [Open Access]

HALAI, A. , Woollams, A., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2020) Investigating the effect of changing parameters when building prediction models in post-stroke aphasia., Nature Human Behaviour, 4(7):725-735 [Open Access]

ALYAHYA, R., HALAI, A. , Conroy, P., LAMBON RALPH, M. (2020) A unified model of post-stroke language deficits including discourse production and their neural correlates, Brain, 143(5) 1541-1554 [Open Access]

Busby, N., HALAI, A. D., Parker, G.J.M., Coop, D.J.M., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2019) Mapping whole brain connectivity changes: The potential impact of different surgical resection approaches for temporal lobe epilepsy, Cortex, 113, April 2019, 1-14 [Open Access]

Stefaniak, J.D., HALAI, A. D., LAMBON RALPH, M.A. (2019) The neural and neurocomputational bases of recovery from post-stroke aphasia., Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(1), 43-55 [Read More]
Schumacher, R., HALAI, A. D., LAMBON-RALPH, M. (2019) Assessing and mapping language, attention and executive multidimensional deficits in stroke aphasia, Brain, 142(10), 3202-3216 [Open Access]
