Continuous theta burst stimulation over right pars triangularis facilitates naming abilities in chronic post-stroke aphasia by enhancing phonological access

Abstract

Background: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been used experimentally to facilitate naming abilities in individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia. However, little is known about how rTMS confers clinical improvement, hampering its therapeutic value. The present study investigated the characteristics of naming failure that improve following administration of continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS)-an inhibitory form of rTMS-to the right pars triangularis (rPTr) in persons with chronic aphasia.

cTBS effect on language reorganization verified by fMRI and chronometry TMS in an aphasia patient

“…Manipulating of synaptic transmission by rTMS is suggested to be based on the long‐term potentiation or depression‐like phenomena of synaptic plasticity. Most prior studies of low‐frequency rTMS (mostly 1 Hz) over right Broca's homologue area in aphasia patients showed benefits in picture naming . To the best of our knowledge, this would be the first case report showing the physiological effect of cTBS over Broca's homologue area on the reorganization of language network in aphasia patient, which was similar to 1 Hz stimulation.…”

“…Most prior studies of low-frequency rTMS (mostly 1 Hz) over right Broca's homologue area in aphasia patients showed benefits in picture naming. 1,2,[5][6][7] To the best of our knowledge, this would be the first case report showing the physiological effect of cTBS over Broca's homologue area on the reorganization of language network in aphasia patient, which was similar to 1 Hz stimulation. There was one study that observed cTBS effect on behavioral outcome by measuring the response time of picture naming in normal subjects, which was shorter after cTBS.…”

Word Error Analysis in Aphasia: Introducing the Greek Aphasia Error Corpus (GRAEC)

“…More generally, extended data from aphasic discourse in languages like Greek are expected to contribute to the investigation of its linguistic properties in comparison with other languages; for example, the pilot version of GREAC has been compared to English and Hungarian data, suggesting that word frequency distribution is similar to non-aphasic discourse, whereas differences between languages can be related to languages' morphological properties and particular language impairments (Neophytou et al, 2017). The detailed error annotation can also provide important evidence for the distribution of error types, especially the pervasive phonological vs. semantic distinction (Schuchard et al, 2017;McKinnon et al, 2018;Harvey et al, 2019), as well as of sub-categories of error types, that is the relative frequency of substitution, omission, addition etc. in order to test the findings of earlier linguistic studies of aphasic discourse (e.g., Blumstein, 1973;Lesser, 1995).…”

“…The detailed error annotation can also provide important evidence for the distribution of error types, especially the pervasive phonological vs. semantic distinction (Schuchard et al, 2017 ; McKinnon et al, 2018 ; Harvey et al, 2019 ), as well as of sub-categories of error types, that is the relative frequency of substitution, omission, addition etc. in order to test the findings of earlier linguistic studies of aphasic discourse (e.g., Blumstein, 1973 ; Lesser, 1995 ).…”

Navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation following awake craniotomy for resection of glioma: Description of two cases

“…[ 11 ] This approach is significant for patients with abnormal brain tissue because it allows contralateral stimulation of the normal brain to improve connectivity through this mechanism of downregulating contralateral excitement. [ 9 , 11 , 21 ]…”