Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Impact on therapy for aphasia
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Exploring the potential for transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to increase gains from speech and language therapy in aphasia
IRAS ID
94013
Contact name
Anna Woollams
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The University of Manchester
Research summary
Word finding difficulty (anomia) is a common symptom of aphasia, a disorder in which people have problems understanding and/or producing language after brain damage. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive method that indirectly alters brain activity. When positive current is applied, brain activity increases, whilst when negative current is applied, brain activity decreases. Research has shown that tDCS can help healthy adults learn new labels for objects, like learning to call a pen a “sploog”, suggesting that we can use tDCS alongside speech and language therapy to help people with anomia to re-learn object names.
This project will discover the type of tDCS that is most helpful to four groups of individuals with aphasia linked to different areas/types of left hemisphere brain damage: stroke survivors who have word finding difficulties associated with either anterior or posterior brain lesions, and those with progressive aphasia (a neurodegenerative disease) associated with either anterior or posterior brain degeneration. We will apply tDCS to the areas surrounding the damaged brain regions (and to equivalent areas in the right hemisphere whilst patients complete a computer based therapy involving the repetition of object names they have difficulties with. This will be compared to a ‘sham’ tDCS condition, in which no application of the current is administered during the therapy task.
We will measure how quickly patients relearn object names in each of the tDCS conditions. On the basis of previous research, we anticipate that positive stimulation on the left and negative stimulation on the right will aid relearning. Assuming that tDCS does help people with aphasia to relearn the connections between objects and their names, this technique could be used more widely in the future to increase benefits from behavioural speech and language therapy.REC name
North West - Haydock Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/NW/0844
Date of REC Opinion
20 Dec 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion