Abstract
Adults struggling with low reading skills are underserved by limited available treatments. While brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has the potential to improve a variety of cognitive functions, little work has been done examining its potential to treat reading disabilities. Research on the effects of tDCS on reading abilities has been somewhat inconsistent perhaps in part due to discrepancies between studies in the nature of the tasks. In the current study, we examined the effect of tDCS to the left inferior parietal lobe (L IPL) on two reading tasks in low-to-average readers. We compared performance on a sight word efficiency (SWE) task and a rhyme judgment task before and after either stimulation to the L IPL, right superior parietal lobe (R SPL), or sham stimulation. Readers who received stimulation to the L IPL showed greater improvements on the SWE task, but less improvement on the rhyme judgment task compared to the R SPL and sham groups. This study demonstrates for the first time both a positive and negative effect of stimulation under the same stimulation parameters within the same participants. The results highlight the need to consider multiple tasks when assessing the potential of using tDCS as a treatment.
Highlights
Over the last decade, interest in using brain stimulation techniques as a therapeutic tool to treat cognitive impairment in adults has received increasing attention (Dubljevicet al., 2014)
Follow-up tests revealed the left inferior parietal lobe (L IPL) group showed significantly greater improvement compared to the Sham group [F(1, 19) = 7, p = 0.016] and a trend toward greater improvement compared to the right superior parietal lobe (R SPL) group [F(1, 20) = 4.22, p = 0.053]
Our results indicate stimulation to the L IPL may be a good site for improving reading fluency for low-to-average readers, the lack of improvement on the rhyme judgment task warrants caution in advocating the left IPL as a site to improve several aspects of reading
Summary
Interest in using brain stimulation techniques as a therapeutic tool to treat cognitive impairment in adults has received increasing attention (Dubljevicet al., 2014). Research using brain stimulation to treat learning disorders, such as dyslexia and dyscalculia, has been called for (Cohen Kadosh et al, 2013; Krause and Cohen Kadosh, 2013; Vicario and Nitsche, 2013). While those with learning disorders do not have frank insult to the brain, they are believed to have altered brain activation in key brain regions when compared to typical adults (Pugh et al, 2001; Price and Ansari, 2013; Norton et al, 2014; Kucian and von Aster, 2015). Identifying the brain regions integral to the process is not trivial, in the case of reading
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