T.B. (Thomas) Tienkamp, Dr

Communication with others is one of the most important aspects of life. When speaking becomes difficult, this can have a major impact on a person’s quality of life. For this reason, I am deeply interested in understanding where speech problems originate.

Speech difficulties can have different causes. In some cases, they are anatomical, for example following treatment for tongue or oral cancer. In other cases, the cause lies in the brain, such as in people with aphasia and Parkinson's disease. By gaining a better understanding of the underlying causes and mechanisms of speech impairments, I aim to contribute to improved speech-language therapy and, ultimately, to a better quality of life for individuals.

Projects I am currently working on, or have worked on in the past, include:

• Longitudinal research on changes in articulation in patients treated for tongue cancer

• Testing and development of speech technology for oral cancer patients (in collaboration with the NKI-AVL)

• Acoustic analysis of spontaneous speech in oral cancer patients (in collaboration with the NKI-AVL)

• Research on time reference in aphasia

• Development and evaluation of therapy materials for people with aphasia (in collaboration with Erasmus MC Rotterdam)

• Effects of multilingual language use on executive control, including the collection of pupillometric data