Younger Jessica W, Randazzo Wagner Melissa, Booth James R
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern UniversityEvanston, IL, USA; Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at AustinAustin, TX, USA.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern UniversityEvanston, IL, USA; Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Teachers College, Columbia UniversityNew York, NY, USA.
Front Neurosci. 2016 Jun 7;10:262. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2016.00262. eCollection 2016.
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.
阅读能力低下的成年人难以获得现有的有限治疗。虽然诸如经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）等脑刺激技术有潜力改善多种认知功能，但在研究其治疗阅读障碍的潜力方面所做的工作很少。关于tDCS对阅读能力影响的研究结果有些不一致，这可能部分是由于不同研究在任务性质上存在差异。在本研究中，我们考察了对低至中等水平阅读者的左顶下叶（L IPL）进行tDCS刺激对两项阅读任务的影响。我们比较了在对L IPL、右顶上叶（R SPL）进行刺激或假刺激前后，被试在实词效率（SWE）任务和韵律判断任务上的表现。与R SPL组和假刺激组相比，接受L IPL刺激的阅读者在SWE任务上有更大的进步，但在韵律判断任务上的进步较小。本研究首次在同一被试中、在相同刺激参数下证明了刺激的积极和消极效应。结果强调在评估使用tDCS作为治疗手段的潜力时需要考虑多个任务。
