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Abstract
Aphasia is a highly disabling language disorder usually caused by a left-lateralized brain damage. Even if traditional linguistic-based therapies have been proved to induce an adequate clinical improvement, a large percentage of patients are left with some degree of language impairments. Therefore, new approaches to common speech therapies are urgently needed in order to maximize the recovery from aphasia. The recent application of non-invasive neurostimulation techniques to language rehabilitation has already provided promising results particularly for the recovery of word-retrieval deficits in chronic stroke aphasic patients. Positive outcomes also come from action observation therapy. Indeed, some very recent studies have shown that the observation and/or execution of gestures positively influences language recovery especially for words related to human actions. This article gives an overview of the most important results achieved using these two approaches and discusses how the application of these treatments might potentiate aphasia recovery.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending or royalties.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.
Key issues
Aphasia is a highly disabling language disorder frequently caused by a left-cerebral damage.
The traditional aphasia therapy approaches are largely based on compensatory strategies or repetitive training of lost functions. Although these therapies have been proved effective, some patients are left with some degree of language deficits. Mostly, due to the lack of intensive treatment programs.
Intensive language therapies are not always easy to administer both for limited resources of the health services and/or for the difficulty often experienced by clinicians to involve the family in the treatment plan.
Therefore, effective treatment approaches that might be used as an adjunct to common speech and language therapies in order to maximize the recovery process are urgently needed to treat aphasic people.
In these last years, non-invasive brain stimulation methods and the Action Observation approach have been provided useful as adjuvant techniques for language recovery.
Brain stimulation studies have indicated that is possible to speed-up language recovery coupling these techniques with traditional aphasia therapies. Right now, these treatments have been proved fruitful in different aphasic populations for the improvement of word-finding difficulties, auditory comprehension deficits, articulatory disturbances and spontaneous speech production problems.
With regard to the Action Observation approach, results have shown that it is possible to enhance verb recovery by simply requiring aphasic patients with verb retrieval deficits to observe actions belonging to the human repertoire.
In both domains, beneficial effects have been achieved through short-term intensive treatment programs.
Non-invasive brain stimulation and Action Observation treatment approaches are very promising tools as supplementary treatment approaches to aphasia recovery.