A case study of primary progressive aphasia: Improvement on verbs after rTMS treatment

Abstract

This case-report shows that high frequency repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (hf-rTMS), applied to the left prefrontal cortex, may improve the linguistic skills in Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). The patient's performance was evaluated on a battery of language production and memory span tasks, before and after two hf-rTMS treatments and one SHAM treatment. We observed a significant and lasting improvement of the patient's performance on verb production following the application of hf-rTMS versus Baseline and SHAM conditions. This finding suggests that hf-rTMS may directly strengthen the neural connections within an area of metabolic dysfunction and encourages the use of rTMS as an alternative therapeutic tool for neurodegenerative forms of aphasia.