View clinical trials related to Chronic Aphasia.
Filter by:This Phase II study aims to ascertain the effectiveness of HD-tDCS for adjunctive treatment of anomia in chronic aphasia post stroke. Furthermore, it will help explore factors such as alternate outcome measures, subject selection criteria, and benefits of extended treatment duration. These results will be compared to an existing trial using conventional non-targeted tDCS with the same design and outcomes. Patients will be treated with HD-tDCS while performing computerized anomia treatment. The basis behind this method is that language therapy is mediated by cortical areas that are most effectively activated during the training tasks, thus increasing electric stimulation in these areas may improve learning outcomes. To better understand the long term benefits of the adjunctive treatment, patients will be screened again four weeks and six months after study using the same anomia tests. If HD-tDCS shows promising results in increasing the learning outcomes of anomia treatment, a Phase III trial can be considered.
The few studies looking systematically into the neurophysiological and neuropsychological components of available therapies for chronic aphasia are highly heterogeneous in nature. Results from these studies have, unsurprisingly, indicated heterogeneous results, such as dissimilar neural outcomes associated with neuropsychological gains. There is, therefore, no consensus of how a successful therapy— that is, one that produces a measurable language gain in either production or comprehension —impacts the functional language networks of the brain in a specific type of aphasia population. A recent study has shown that inner speech (the imagination of speech) involves networks and areas dissociable from those implicated in speech production. Further, behavioural analysis has shown an interesting discrepancy between inner speech and overt speech (also called speech production) in a small chronic aphasia population: some participants elicited poor inner speech coupled with relatively intact overt speech, while others elicited relatively intact inner speech coupled with poor overt speech. This unexplored discrepancy implies that inner speech and speech production are dissociable, though share similar networks. This discrepancy, and the notion that these speech components share a similar network, drives this study's hypothesis that improvement in speech production after rehabilitation might be facilitated by an intact inner speech network. Much as good athletes visualise their performance before the actual event in order to increase their chances of success, so too might intact inner speech facilitate speech production, helping to visualise the word in order to increase the success of produced speech. By studying a specific component of speech—inner speech—in a relatively homogeneous population of chronic expressive aphasics, the present study provides an explicit, critical means of understanding neurophysiological (as assessed by functional magnetic resonance imaging) and neuropsychological (as assessed by language batteries and personal questionnaires/interviews) changes occurring during speech therapy. As a secondary objective, this study will explore the effectiveness, feasibility and adherence to an at-home computerised aphasia software delivered via a portable tablet.
The purpose of this study is to assess the changes in language processing of patients with chronic aphasia after receiving non-invasive brain stimulation.Previous research using traditional transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) using 2 sponge electrodes has shown that persons with aphasia show more improvement after treatment when that treatment is accompanied by brain stimulation. Traditional tDCS has recently been modified to deliver current to more specific locations in the brain. This new delivery method is called high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS). It is not known whether traditional tDCS (more diffuse current delivery) or HD-tDCS (more focal current delivery) will be the better approach for enhancing treatment outcomes. To answer this question, computerized speech-language treatment will be administered during the application of the different forms of brain stimulation.