High-Frequency Language Therapy with Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS): A Longitudinal Single-Case Report of Semantic Variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia (svPPA)

Overview

Journal Brain Sci

Publisher MDPI

Date 2024 Feb 23

PMID 38391708

Authors

Katharina Strunk

Sabine Weiss

Horst M Muller

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: The goal of this study was to investigate whether the combination of semantic feature analysis (SFA) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is effective in treating word retrieval in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and how long the potential effects last.

Methods: A 56-year-old woman diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and svPPA participated in this longitudinal single-subject design. A total of four 2-week stimulation phases were conducted over a 14-month period, each of which was started depending on the participant's language performance. Follow-up testing was conducted shortly after the stimulation period, approximately 2 weeks, and approximately 4 weeks thereafter.

Results: Significant improvement in word retrieval occurred after SFA and tDCS therapy. Two weeks after the end of each stimulation phase, approx. 80% of the trained words could be named correctly. For the untrained words, also significantly more words were correctly named at follow-ups compared to the baseline. Furthermore, the Boston Naming Test (BNT) demonstrated a significant increase in naming performance and showed that phonological cues facilitated word retrieval compared to semantic cues.

Conclusion: The combination of SFA and tDCS was able to counteract the expected language deterioration of a participant with svPPA. This effect increased until approximately 2 weeks after each intervention. In addition, a generalization of the effect to untrained words was shown.

Citing Articles

Feasibility of home-based transcranial direct current stimulation combined with personalized word retrieval for improving naming in primary progressive aphasia.

George A, McConathey E, Vogel-Eyny A, Galletta E, Pilloni G, Charvet L Front Neurol. 2025; 16:1543712.

PMID: 40007739 PMC: 11852435. DOI: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1543712.

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