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Mechanisms of aphasia recovery after stroke and the role of noninvasive brain stimulation
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Mechanisms of aphasia recovery after stroke and the role of noninvasive brain stimulation

Roy H. Hamilton, Evangelia G. Chrysikou and Branch Coslett
Brain and language, v 118(1)
01 Jul 2011
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2011.02.005
PMID: 21459427
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1149/MA2011-02/13/680View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze),  Open

Abstract

Aphasia Interhemispheric interactions Neuroplasticity Neurorehabilitation Stroke Transcranial direct current stimulation Transcranial magnetic stimulation
► Multiple mechanisms contribute to recovery in patients with post-stroke aphasia. ► Changes include reorganization of the lesioned left and intact right hemispheres. ► Noninvasive brain stimulation may allow for enhancement of language recovery. One of the most frequent symptoms of unilateral stroke is aphasia, the impairment or loss of language functions. Over the past few years, behavioral and neuroimaging studies have shown that rehabilitation interventions can promote neuroplastic changes in aphasic patients that may be associated with the improvement of language functions. Following left hemisphere strokes, the functional reorganization of language in aphasic patients has been proposed to involve both intrahemispheric interactions between damaged left hemisphere and perilesional sites and transcallosal interhemispheric interactions between the lesioned left hemisphere language areas and homotopic regions in the right hemisphere. A growing body of evidence for such reorganization comes from studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), two safe and noninvasive procedures that can be applied clinically to modulate cortical excitability during post-stroke language recovery. We discuss a hierarchical model for the plastic changes in language representation that occur in the setting of dominant hemisphere stroke and aphasia. We further argue that TMS and tDCS are potentially promising tools for enhancing functional recovery of language and for further elucidating mechanisms of plasticity in patients with aphasia.

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265 citations in Web of Science
303 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Web of Science research areas
Audiology & Speech-language Pathology
Linguistics
Neurosciences
Psychology, Experimental
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