Novel therapeutic techniques for post stroke aphasia: A narrative review

Aphasia, an acquired language disorder, commonly results from a stroke affecting network of cortical and subcortical structures. Aphasia lacks effective standardised treatment. Neuroimaging and behavioural research indicate that some interventions promote neuroplasticity changes in aphasia. Research has suggested that non-invasive brain stimulation may be effective, causing functional reorganisation of language areas between the two hemispheres. This reorganisation evolves from different researches exploring novel procedures, including transcranial magnetic stimulation and intracranial direct current stimulation, which may modulate cortical activity in aphasia. The current narrative review was planned to assess these techniques while examining the casual role of specific regions of brain and the understanding of the underlying mechanism for treatment effects of brain stimulation. Literature was explored on search engines and databases, like Medline, Web of Science and bibliography of published studies. The key words used for the search were 'non-invasive brain stimulation', 'post-stroke aphasia', 'transcranial magnetic stimulation' and 'transcranial direct current stimulation'. Of the 175 publications downloaded, 40(23%) full-text English publications were reviewed.