Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation as an Adjuvant for Nonfluent Aphasia: A Proof-of-Concept Study

Authors

• Lynsey M. Keator, Thomas Jefferson UniversityFollow
• Lisa Johnson
• Roger Newman-Norlund
• Kyler Spell
• Samaneh Nemati
• Leigh Ann Spell
• Dirk B. den Ouden
• Christopher Rorden
• Julius Fridriksson

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-23-2026

Comments

This article is the author’s final published version in Bioengineering, Volume 13, Issue 3, 2026, Article number 372.

The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering13030372. Copyright © 2026 by the authors.

Abstract

Effective rehabilitation tools are essential for improving language outcomes in chronic aphasia. Speech entrainment is a behavioral treatment that has shown promise in enhancing speech output in nonfluent aphasia, potentially by acting as an external mechanism to synchronize anterior and posterior language regions in the left hemisphere. Transcranial alternating current stimulation has been hypothesized to enhance functional connectivity between brain regions by amplifying endogenous oscillations. This proof-of-concept study explored whether high-definition tACS (HD-tACS) could improve speech fluency in nonfluent aphasia when paired with speech entrainment. In a double-blind, pseudorandomized study, 1 mA of HD-tACS at 7 Hz was applied to anterior and posterior left-hemisphere regions of individuals with nonfluent aphasia (N = 13). Stimulation was applied under three conditions: in-phase, anti-phase, and sham, and paired speech entrainment. Three outcome measures were examined: (1) number of words produced; (2) number of errors, and (3) 'entrainment' to the speech entrainment model. Group-level analyses for two of the three outcome measures reveal statistically significant differences between the experimental conditions. In-phase alternating current stimulation yielded more words and better entrainment to the audiovisual model than the sham condition. This study provides promising evidence that HD-tACS could improve speech production in individuals with nonfluent aphasia. These results contribute to growing evidence supporting the therapeutic potential of non-invasive brain stimulation approaches as an adjuvant to traditional behavioral speech-language therapy in stroke survivors.

Recommended Citation

Keator, Lynsey M.; Johnson, Lisa; Newman-Norlund, Roger; Spell, Kyler; Nemati, Samaneh; Spell, Leigh Ann; den Ouden, Dirk B.; Rorden, Christopher; and Fridriksson, Julius, "Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation as an Adjuvant for Nonfluent Aphasia: A Proof-of-Concept Study" (2026). Department of Speech-Language Pathology Faculty Papers. Paper 2.
https://jdc.jefferson.edu/slpfp/2

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Language

English