Functional neuroimaging and behavioral correlates of multisite tDCS as an add-on to language training in a person with post-stroke non-fluent aphasia: a year-long case study

ABSTRACT

Mary, who experienced non-fluent aphasia as a result of an ischemic stroke, received 10 years of personalized language training (LT), resulting in transient enhancements in speech and comprehension. To enhance these effects, multisite transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) was added to her LT regimen for 15 sessions. Assessment using the Reliable Change Index showed that this combination improved her left inferior frontal connectivity and speech production for two months and significantly improved comprehension after one month. The results indicate that using multisite transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can improve the effectiveness of language therapy (LT) for individuals with non-fluent aphasia.

KEYWORDS:

• Non-fluent aphasia
• multisite tDCS
• language training
• dorsal and ventral language streams
• fMRI

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to the participant of this case report, and Patricia Coelho for her contributions to data collection with tDCS.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Author contribution statement

AL and AJM: conception and design, acquisition of data, analysis, interpretation of data, and drafting of the article. SC and JL: conception and design, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting and revising the final version of the manuscript. MS: fMRI analysis, and interpretation of data. AS fMRI data collection and revising the final version of the manuscript. All authors participated in the writing of the manuscript and approved the final version.

Data availability statement

Anonymized data may be made available to others upon request an after the approval of a proposal.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2024.2349327

Additional information

Funding

AJM and AL were supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement [POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653] and by the Psychology Research Center [PSI/01662], University of Minho, supported by FCT and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education [UID/PSI/01662/2019] through national funds (PIDDAC) and co-funded by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement [POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653].