Transcranial alternating current stimulation to enhance language abilities

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Stroke represents the primary cause of adult disability in the United States. A frequent, debilitating consequence of stroke is impairments in the ability to produce and/or comprehend language, called aphasia, which has profound impacts on quality of life due to the barriers it places on participation in professional and social daily life activities. Behavioral intervention—the current standard-of-care—provide some benefit for persons with aphasia (PWA), but their effectiveness is variable due in part to logistic and financial limitations that render interventions with the level of frequency, intensity, and duration required for lasting benefits infeasible for many PWA. Thus, there is a need for novel, time- and cost-effective interventions to expedite and improve aphasia recovery. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) has emerged as a promising noninvasive brain stimulation technique that may enhance stroke-related disability (motor impairments) and other neurological and psychiatric disorders, but the potential for improving outcomes specifically for language impairment has not yet been explored. The career development and research plans of the proposed project will allow the candidate to establish a T2 translational research program as an independent investigator to systematically explore the potential for tACS to enhance treatment outcomes in individuals with stroke-induced language impairment. The career development plan will help expand the candidate’s research program to include basic and clinical investigations of tACS-induced plasticity and its potential to facilitate language abilities in unimpaired and impaired speakers. The research plan provides an empirical foundation for this research program by investigating the neurophysiological mechanism by which tACS promotes language performance enhancement. The long-term goal of this research is to develop effective intervention approaches for individuals with acquired language impairment by combining theoretically- and neurally-guided intervention with treatment-enhancing neuromodulation techniques. The main objective of this proposal is to establish a best-practice approach for using tACS to support impairments in spoken word production. The central hypothesis of this proposal is that tACS can enhance word production abilities by modulating endogenous neuronal activation patterns associated with language. The rationale for the proposed research is that understanding neurophysiological biomarkers of language impairment and tACS-induced changes in neuronal pattens of activation may help determine the most effective approach to enhancing stroke treatment outcomes while extending our basic science knowledge of how tACS modulates neural activity. The proposed research is significant because it will enable the development of intervention procedures that maximize recovery from acquired language impairment, combining targeted therapy with tACS to unmask the residual capacity neuroplasticity in chronic stroke survivors. The proposed research is relevant to the NIH’s mission pertaining to developing fundamental knowledge that will potentially help to reduce the burdens of human disability.