Options to enhance recovery from aphasia by means of non-invasive brain stimulation and action observation therapy

Aphasia is a highly disabling language disorder usually caused by a left-lateralized brain damage. Even if traditional linguistic-based therapies have been proved to induce an adequate clinical improvement, a large percentage of patients are left with some degree of language impairments. Therefore, new approaches to common speech therapies are urgently needed in order to maximize the recovery from aphasia. The recent application of non-invasive neurostimulation techniques to language rehabilitation has already provided promising results particularly for the recovery of word-retrieval deficits in chronic stroke aphasic patients. Positive outcomes also come from action observation therapy. Indeed, some very recent studies have shown that the observation and/or execution of gestures positively influences language recovery especially for words related to human actions. This article gives an overview of the most important results achieved using these two approaches and discusses how the application of these treatments might potentiate aphasia recovery.