NCT04963803

Improving Aphasia Using Electrical Brain Stimulation

Improving Aphasia Outcomes Through tDCS-Mediated Attention Management

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 23 (actual)
• Sponsor: Syracuse University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Language and communication are essential for almost every aspect of human life, but for people who have aphasia, a language processing disorder that can occur after stroke or brain injury, even simple conversations can become a formidable challenge. Speech and language therapy can help people recover their language ability, but often requires months or even years of therapy before a person is able to overcome these challenges. This research will investigate non-invasive brain stimulation as a way to enhance the effects of speech and language therapy, which may ultimately lead to better and faster recovery from stroke and aphasia. The investigators hypothesize that participants with aphasia who receive speech and language therapy paired with active electrical brain stimulation will improve significantly more on a language comprehension task than those who receive speech and language therapy paired with sham stimulation.

Conditions

• Stroke
• Aphasia

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	Active transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)	Active transcranial direct current stimulation will be delivered using a Soterix mini-CT device. Participants receiving this treatment will be administered 2 milliamperes (mA) of current for 20 minutes/session for 10 sessions.
DEVICE	Sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)	Sham transcranial direct current stimulation will be delivered using a Soterix mini-CT device. Participants receiving this treatment will be administered 2 milliamperes (mA) of current for 1 minute to simulate the experience of tDCS, after which the current will be ramped down to zero for the remaining 19 minutes of the session. Participants in this arm will receive sham stimulation for 10 sessions.
BEHAVIORAL	Language Specific Attention Treatment	This is a specific type of speech-language therapy that focuses on simultaneously improving auditory comprehension and behavioral attention. All study participants will receive 10 sessions of this treatment.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-07-12
• Primary completion: 2024-11-15
• Completion: 2024-12-31
• First posted: 2021-07-15
• Last updated: 2026-01-30
• Results posted: 2026-01-30

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States

Regulatory

• FDA-regulated device study