Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to Improve Speech in Aphasia

Summary

The purpose of this study is to examine whether repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) can be used to improve speech in chronic stroke patients with aphasia. Aphasia patients can have problems with speech production. The rTMS procedure allows painless, noninvasive stimulation of human cortex from outside the head.

Chronic aphasia patients have been observed in our functional magnetic resonance brain imaging studies to have excess brain activation in brain areas possibly related to language on the right side of the brain (opposite side to where the stroke took place). It is expected that suppression of activity in the directly targeted brain region will have an overall modulating effect on the neural network for naming (and propositional speech) and will result in behavioral improvement.

Conditions

• Aphasia
• Cerebrovascular Stroke

Interventions

DEVICE

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Repetitive

10 rTMS treatments (90% of motor threshold, 20 minutes, at 1 Hz) to specific right hemisphere area of brain cortex; 5 days per week for 2 weeks at the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; or at the Neurology Department, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

  collaborator NIH

• Harvard Medical School (HMS and HSDM)

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Pennsylvania

  collaborator OTHER

• Boston University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Margaret A Naeser, Ph.D. · Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA

• H B Coslett, M.D. · Department of Neurology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

• Alvaro Pascual-Leone, M.D., Ph.D. · Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

TRIPLE

Model

CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age

45 Years

Max Age

80 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2002-07-31

Primary Completion

2013-06-30

Completion

2013-06-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations