Verbal Fluency in Mild Alzheimer’s Disease: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation over the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex

Background: Recent studies showed that in healthy controls and aphasic patients, inhibitory trains of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the right prefrontal cortex can improve phonemic fluency performance, while anodal direct current (tDCS) left performance naming semantic tasks. Objective: This study aimed at investigating effects cathodal tDCS or dorsolateral (DLPFC) on verbal tasks (VFT) patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Methods: Forty AD participated (mean age 73.17±5.61 years). All participants underwent cognitive baseline a VFT twice. Twenty randomly received to DLPFC, twenty were assigned control group which only two measures taken, without administration tDCS. Results: A significant improvement was present after DLPFC (p = 0.001). Instead, no difference detected between VFTs sessions 0.42). Furthermore, these results cannot be related task learning effects, since found 0.73). Conclusion: These data suggest patients. hypothesis is enhances adaptive patterns brain activity functionally connected areas.