The Effect Of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Over Left Posterior Perisylvian Region On Auditory Word Comprehension And Visual Word Comprehension In Aphasia

Objective:The aphasia is very common among patients with stroke,seriously affecting the physical-mental health and quality of life.With the development of cognitive neuropsychology,psycholinguistic assessment in Chinese aphasia(PACA)has been widely applied to the rehabilitation of language,achieving good curative effect.However,for some patients with post-stroke aphasia,the recovery time for the speech therapy has been long.How to effectively improve the language ability of patients with aphasia is still one of the problems to be solved.Recently,transcranial direct current stimulation(tDCS)has been widely used among patients with post-stroke aphasia.Clinical studies about tDCS conducted to date,however,have shown mixed results among chronic aphasic patients.The researches on language recovery among post-stroke aphasic patients in the early and middle period are less.Therefore,this study will investigate the effect of tDCS on language recovery among post-stroke aphasic patients in the early and middle period.Methods:20 patients with post-stroke aphasia who has been recruited at the department of rehabilitation in First Hospital of Shanxi Medical University from January 2017 to January 2018 were selected as objects.Patients were randomly divided into two group:patients who accepted anodal tDCS and patients who accepted sham t DCS.The former group accepted the speech therapy(30min/day)and anodaltDCS(1.6mA,20min/day,5cm × 7cm),meanwhile,the latter group accepted the speech therapy(30min/day)and sham tDCS.The current remained only for 30 s during sham tDCS.Anode electrode was placed over the left posterior perisylvian region,with the other electrode over the right shoulder.They were administered 2 weeks(5days/week).The patients were measured with psycholinguistic assessment in Chinese aphasia(PACA)before and after treatment,including the scores of auditory word comprehension and visual word comprehension and the reaction time(RT)of high-frequency and low-frequency words.Results:1.After intervention,all patients had significant improvement in the scores of auditory word comprehension and visual word comprehension(P<0.05);but there was no statistically significant difference in the improvement of scores between the two groups after treatment(P>0.05)2.After treatment,all patients showed significant reduction in RT of high-frequency and low-frequency words(P<0.05);and the patients experienced greater reduction in RT of high-frequency and low-frequency words after anodal tDCS compared with sham tDCS(P<0.05).Conclusion:Anodal tDCS can promote language recovery among post-stroke aphasic patients in early and middle period,and is worthy of further clinical application.