Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany; Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany.
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany; Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany.
Brain Stimul. 2019 Jul-Aug;12(4):930-937. doi: 10.1016/j.brs.2019.02.007. Epub 2019 Feb 13.
About 10% of the western population suffers from a specific disability in the acquisition of reading and writing skills, known as developmental dyslexia (DD). Even though DD starts in childhood it frequently continuous throughout lifetime. Impaired processing of acoustic features at the phonematic scale based on dysfunctional auditory temporal resolution is considered as one core deficit underlying DD. Recently, the efficacy of transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) to modulate auditory temporal resolution and phoneme processing in healthy individuals has been demonstrated.
The present work aims to investigate online effects of tES on phoneme processing in individuals with DD.
Using an established phoneme-categorization task, we assessed the immediate behavioral and electrophysiological effects of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) and transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) over bilateral auditory cortex in children and adolescents with DD (study 1) and adults with DD (study 2) on auditory phoneme processing acuity.
Our data revealed that tACS improved phoneme categorization in children and adolescents with DD, an effect that was paralleled by an increase in evoked brain response patterns representing low-level sensory processing. In the adult sample we replicated these findings and additionally showed a more pronounced impact of tRNS on phoneme-categorization acuity.
These results provide compelling evidence for the potential of both tACS and tRNS to increase temporal precision of the auditory system in DD and suggest transcranial electrical stimulation as potential intervention in DD to foster the effect of standard phonology-based training.
约 10%的西方人群在读写技能的习得方面存在特定障碍，即发展性阅读障碍（DD）。尽管 DD 始于儿童期，但它通常会持续终生。基于听觉时频分辨率功能障碍的语音特征处理受损被认为是 DD 的一个核心缺陷。最近，经颅电刺激（tES）在调节健康个体的听觉时频分辨率和语音处理方面的效果已得到证实。
本研究旨在探讨 tES 对 DD 个体语音处理的即时在线影响。
使用已建立的语音分类任务，我们评估了经颅交流电刺激（tACS）和经颅随机噪声刺激（tRNS）对双侧听觉皮层在儿童和青少年 DD 患者（研究 1）和成年 DD 患者（研究 2）的即时行为和电生理影响，以评估听觉语音处理敏锐度。
我们的数据显示，tACS 改善了儿童和青少年 DD 患者的语音分类，这一效应与代表低水平感觉处理的诱发电位模式的增加相平行。在成年组中，我们复制了这些发现，并进一步表明 tRNS 对语音分类敏锐度的影响更为显著。
这些结果为 tACS 和 tRNS 增强 DD 患者听觉系统的时频精度提供了有力证据，并表明经颅电刺激有可能作为 DD 的一种干预手段，以促进基于标准语音学的训练效果。
