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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) “is a neuromodulatory technique that sends low-intensity, direct current to cortical areas, facilitating or inhibiting spontaneous neuronal activity” (Brunoni, et al., 2012). Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation is a new intervention, which has received a substantial amount of attention over the past decade, and the main goal of tDCS is to modulate cortical excitability. This form of non-invasive brain stimulation has been used with patients with aphasia and paired with behavioral treatments, to explore its therapeutic potential.
The parameters of tDCS differ depending on various factors, which include electrode size and positioning, intensity, duration of stimulation, number of sessions, and …show more content…

An active saline soaked sponge electrode (5 cm x 7cm), 2mA anodal constant current was applied to Broca’s area daily for 20 minutes over a period of ten days (Volpato, et al., 2013). Furthermore, they were provided with ten sham sessions, which was 30 seconds of stimulation, a control condition, as if they were receiving real stimulation. At the end or beginning of each sham or tDCS treatment, the eight participants were instructed to perform a computerized naming task, where their response time and object naming accuracy was assessed (Volpato, et al., 2013). At the end of the treatment, only one participant demonstrated an improvement in object naming accuracy and response time. The authors, reported that the results of the study revealed that an off-line tDCS approach is not effective in the treatment of chronic aphasia (Volpato, et al., …show more content…

The authors examined, “the potential effects of tDCS in improving spontaneous speech and the ability to use connective words to establish cohesion among adjacent utterances in a group of eight participants with chronic nonfluent aphasia” (Marangolo, et al., 2014). The authors utilized three tDCS conditions: anodic tDCS over the Broca's area, anodic tDCS over the Wernicke's area and a sham condition on all eight adults with nonfluent aphasia. Furthermore, the tDCS intervention involved the F5 and CP5 International 10-20 system for EEG electrode placement, surface soaked electrodes (5cm x 7cm), which held a constant 1 mA current for 20 minutes, performed for ten consecutive daily sessions with 14 days of intersession interval, for 3 months (Marangolo, et al.,

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