• Eun Kyoung Kang, Yu Kyeong Kim, Hae Min Sohn, Leonardo G Cohen, and Nam-Jong Paik.
• Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seongnam, South Korea; Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Seoul Bukbu Geriatric Hospital, Seoul, South Korea.
• Restor. Neurol. Neurosci. 2011 Jan 1;29(3):141-52.

PurposePrevious reports have suggested that noninvasive cortical stimulation could influence speech production in patients with chronic stroke. Here, we evaluated the hypothesis that cathodal transcranial DC stimulation (ctDCS), a technique that decreases excitability of stimulated cortical sites, applied over a healthy right Broca's homologue area could improve picture naming in patients with post-stroke aphasia.MethodsTen right-handed patients with post-stroke aphasia were enrolled in this double blind, counterbalanced sham-controlled, crossover study. Each patient received an intervention of ctDCS (2 mA for 20 min) and of sham tDCS (2 mA for 1 min) daily for 5 consecutive days in a randomized crossover manner with a minimum interval of one week between interventions, over a healthy right Broca's homologue area using a left supraorbital anode and simultaneous daily sessions of conventional word-retrieval training. The primary endpoint measure of this study was a standardized, validated Korean version of the Boston Naming Test, which is a measure of picture naming skills.ResultsctDCS was not found to have any adverse effects. Furthermore, significantly improved picture naming (p = 0.02) was observed at 1 hour following the last (5th) ctDCS treatment session, but no changes were observed after sham tDCS.ConclusionThese results demonstrate that cathodal tDCS over the right healthy Broca's homologue area with a left supraorbital anodal location can improve picture naming task performance in post-stroke aphasia.

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