ABSTRACT
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor and nonmotor symptoms. PD patients may present language problems, including deficits in confrontation naming. Naming deficits are also an important feature of Broca’s aphasia, a condition associated with post-stroke damage to the left inferior prefrontal cortex (Broca’s area). We present the case of a 79-year old, male patient diagnosed with both PD (stage 4 in Hoehn and Yahr’s scale) and chronic post-stroke, non-fluent aphasia. The patient, with particularly severe naming deficits, was treated with a novel combination of audiovisual production therapy and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a noninvasive neuromodulatory technique that has been increasingly used to potentiate speech therapy. Anodal tDCS (2 mA) was applied to the left inferior prefrontal cortex (F7 in the 10/20 system) in nine 20-min sessions over two weeks while the patient tried to name pictures of common objects aided by short videos of an articulating mouth (audiovisual cue). We found significant pre- to post-training naming improvement for treated items and for untreated, phonemically similar items (generalization). The results provide initial indication that audiovisual production therapy combined with anodal tDCS over Broca’s area may represent a viable treatment alternative for patients with severe naming deficits.
Keywords:
Parkinson Disease; Aphasia, Broca; Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation; Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination; Rehabilitation
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