[Direct current electrical stimulation in the treatment of aphasia]

Ictus is a medical condition with a high prevalence in Spanish population. One of its most common consequences is aphasia. Nowadays, aphasia is treated with both neuropsychological and pharmacological therapy. However, in recent years, transcranial direct current stimulation has been presented as a complement to classical therapies.

To familiarize the reader with transcranial direct current stimulation and to critically review the evidence on the benefits of this technique in aphasia rehabilitation.

The first part of this paper describes what transcranial electrical stimulation is. Subsequently, an analysis of the efficacy of this technique in the treatment of aphasia is presented. To achieve this, we searched in PubMed database and found 19 different scientific papers, published between 2008 and 2016, which used transcranial electrical stimulation in the treatment of aphasia.

These studies suggest that, when it is used in conjunction with speech therapy, transcranial direct current electrical stimulation is effective in the treatment of aphasia. In addition, its benefits are observed when a minimum of five sessions with intensities higher than 1 mA, stimulating perilesional areas, and in those patients with fluent aphasias. However, the reviewed studies also suggest that this technique is not a substitutive of speech therapy, but a way to prime the brain to it.