title: Ipsilesional and contralesional regions participate in the improvement of poststroke aphasia: a transcranial direct current stimulation study.
abstract: In the past few years, noninvasive cerebral stimulations have been used to modulate language task performance in healthy and aphasic patients. In this study, a dual transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on anterior and posterior language areas was applied for 2 weeks to a patient with a possible crossed aphasia following a right hemisphere stroke. Inhibitory cathodal stimulation of the right Brodmann areas (BA) 44/45 and simultaneous anodal stimulation of the left BA 44/45 improved the patient's performance in picture naming. Conversely, the same bilateral montage on BA 39/40 did not produce any significant improvement; finally, electrode polarity inversion over BA 39/40 yielded a further improvement compared with the first anterior stimulation. Our findings suggest that ipsilesional and contralesional areas could be useful in poststroke functional reorganization and provide new evidences for the therapeutic value of tDCS in aphasia.
authors: a Department of Experimental BioMedicine and Clinical Neurosciences (BioNeC) , University of Palermo , Palermo , Italy.
authors: Vanessa
authors: V
authors: Costa
authors: Giuseppe
authors: G
authors: Giglia
authors: Filippo
authors: F
authors: Brighina
authors: Serena
authors: S
authors: Indovino
authors: Brigida
authors: B
authors: Fierro
mesh_terms: D001037:Aphasia / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D020521:Stroke / Q000150:complications*; D065908:Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation; D016896:Treatment Outcome
keywords: aphasia; language network; language recovery; stroke; transcranial direct current stimulation