Rachael Harrington

Rachael Harrington serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Georgia State University's College of Education & Human Development, with dual affiliation at the Center for Research on the Challenges of Acquiring Language and Literacy. Her research bridges clinical speech-language pathology with advanced neuroscience methodologies to address post-stroke language and reading disorders.

Her educational foundation includes:

• Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Georgetown University (2017)
• M.S. in Neuroscience, Georgetown University (2014)
• M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology (2011)
• B.A. in French Language and Literature (2009)

Dr. Harrington's research program centers on neurorehabilitation mechanisms for aphasia and alexia, utilizing non-invasive brain stimulation and neuroimaging to map recovery trajectories. Her work uniquely combines clinical linguistics with motor neuroscience, examining both language and motor recovery pathways after stroke. Current NIH-funded projects investigate how theta-burst stimulation modulates reading networks, with direct implications for clinical rehabilitation protocols.

Her publication record demonstrates consistent high-impact contributions across neurorehabilitation and cognitive neuroscience journals, with recent work establishing thalamic volumetry as a stroke recovery biomarker (2021) and developing evidence-based frameworks for aphasia interventions (2022). The lab actively recruits participants for neuroimaging studies examining reading network dynamics in diverse clinical populations.

Funding from the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, and American Speech-Language-Hearing Association supports her translational research program. As a certified speech-language pathologist, she maintains direct clinical connections that inform her research priorities and methodology development. Current opportunities include participation in MRI studies of reading mechanisms and clinical trials of neuromodulation protocols for language recovery.