A stroke can really impact your wellbeing, with particular regard to your mental health. Stroke aphasia – which is associated with impaired speech and language functions – affects 20-30% of stroke survivors. However, according to a new small study, published in the journal Stroke, found that their non-invasive brain stimulation method could potentially repair speech and language functions in such patients.
When a blockage prevents blood from reaching your brain, a stroke can occur. This is most likely to happen in the region of your brain associated with speech and language, and so aphasia often affects the wellness of stroke survivors. This means that you may have difficulty understanding language in terms of reading, writing and speaking, and so the researchers investigated whether transcranial magnetic stimulus (TMS) may help survivors regain some function.
According to Alexander Thiel, MD, study lead author and associate professor of neurology and neurosurgery at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, ‘For decades, skilled speech and language therapy has been the only therapeutic option for stroke survivors with aphasia. We are entering exciting times where we might be able in the near future to combine speech and language therapy with non-invasive brain stimulation earlier in the recovery. This could result in earlier and more efficient aphasia recovery and also have an economic impact.’
TMS is a magnetic coil which, when placed over your motor cortex, stimulates your brain using electrical currents. For the study, 24 stroke survivors were recruited from a rehabilitation hospital in Cologne, Germany, called the Rehanova and Max-Planck-Institute for neurological research. While 13 of the patients were given TMS, the remaining 11 were given a placebo coil which used the same level of intensity but did not actually have any electrical currents. Each patient was then given 45 minutes of language and speech therapy, and this was repeated for 10 days.
The results of the study revealed that those in the TMS group had three times greater speech and language improvement in comparison to patients using the placebo. Thiel commented, ‘TMS had the biggest impact on improvement in anomia, the inability to name objects, which is one of the most debilitating aphasia symptoms. We believe brain stimulation should be most effective early, within about five weeks after stroke, because genes controlling the recovery process are active during this time window.’