The rehabilitative effects on written language of a combined language and parietal dual-tDCS treatment in a stroke case

ABSTRACT

In this paper we report the effect of a combined transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and speech language therapy on linguistic deficits following left brain damage in a stroke case. We show that simultaneous electrical excitatory stimulation to the left and inhibitory stimulation to the right parietal regions (dual-tDCS) affected writing and reading rehabilitation, enhancing speech therapy outcomes. The results of a comparison with healthy controls showed that application of dual-tDCS could improve, in particular, sub-lexical transcoding and, specifically, the reading of non-words with increasing length and complexity. Positive repercussions on patient's quality of functional communication were also ascertained. Significant changes were also found in other language and cognitive tasks not directly treated (comprehension and constructive apraxia).

KEYWORDS:

• Speech language therapy
• tDCS
• Reading and writing rehabilitation
• Stroke

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Alessandro Cicerale for critically revising this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed via 10.1080/09602011.2015.1103759.

ORCID

Federico D'Agata http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9432-0248

Paolo Mortara http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8347-5172

Giuseppe Massazza http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1237-5136

Lorenzo Pinessi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9839-7450

Additional information

Funding

The research was conducted in the Otorhinolaryngology 2 U, AOU Città della Salute e della Scienza (Presidio Molinette), Turin.