Enhancement of Facilitation Training for Aphasia by Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

Abstract

We aimed to enhance the performance of naming and sentence production in chronic post-stroke aphasia by tablet-based language training combined with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) conducted on non-consecutive days. We applied a deblocking method involved in stimulation-facilitation therapy to six participants with chronic aphasia who performed naming and sentence production tasks for impaired modalities, immediately after a spoken-word picture-matching task for an intact modality. The participants took part in two conditional sessions: a tDCS condition in which they performed a spoken word-picture matching task while we delivered an anodal tDCS over the left inferior frontal cortex; and a sham condition in which sham stimulation was delivered. We hypothesized that, compared with the sham stimulation, the application of anodal tDCS over the left inferior frontal cortex during the performance of tasks requiring access to semantic representations would enhance the deblocking effect, thereby improving the performances for subsequent naming and sentence production. Our results showed greater improvements 2 weeks after training with tDCS than those after training with sham stimulation. The accuracy rate of naming was significantly higher in the tDCS condition than in the sham condition, regardless of whether the words were trained or not. Also, we found a significant improvement in the production of related words and sentences for the untrained words in the tDCS condition, compared with that found pretraining, while in the sham condition we found no significant improvement compared with that found pre-training. These results support our hypothesis and suggest the effectiveness of the use of tDCS during language training on non-consecutive days.

The 2020 Yearbook of Neurorestoratology

“…Several studies indicate that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that can be used effectively to treat neurological or neuropsychiatric disorders, including poststroke aphasia [37][38][39][40], primary progressive aphasia [41], postanoxic leukoencephalopathy [42], disorders of consciousness [43,44], high autistic traits [45], schizo-obsessive disorder [46], risk-taking behavior [47], prosocial decision making [48], and chronic ankle instability [49].…”

Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation and Behavioral Training, a Promising Tool for a Tailor-Made Post-stroke Aphasia Rehabilitation: A Review

“…Lastly, computers can be used as an electronic pointing device to share text, images, digital animations and speech files between therapist and patient, so that both parties can communicate together during therapy sessions ( Chapey, 2008 ). A significant improvement after the use of computer-based therapies was often shown ( Fridriksson et al, 2012 , 2018b ; Richardson et al, 2015 ; Meinzer et al, 2016 ) and progresses were often maintained at the follow-up, which varied from two weeks ( Fridriksson et al, 2011 ; Ihara et al, 2020 ) to three months ( Woodhead et al, 2018 ).…”