Feasibility Testing of tDCS and Metacognitive Strategy Training in Chronic Stroke

Currently seven million people are living in the United States post stroke, making stroke the leading cause of long term disability. Almost half of the people living in the community following stroke have problems that challenge the activities that support their daily lives. This is in part due to the rehabilitation community's focus on short term stroke recovery and not on supporting survivors' need to actively manage their long-term disability and the environment around them so they can return to full participation in communities of their choice post-rehabilitation. The rehabilitation community is in need of evidence-based interventions for addressing post-stroke functional limitations. Metacognitive strategy training is a performance-based, problem-solving approach to task performance difficulties. Participants are taught to identify when to apply a cognitive strategy, how to apply it, and how to monitor and adapt usage of cognitive strategies within task performance. Metacognitive strategy training is recognized as a practice standard for addressing functional limitations post-stroke. Transcranial direct current stimulation is a method that has been used for over 15 years to modulate the excitability of targeted brain regions. While it does not directly stimulate neurons, it results in changes to polarity of neuronal membranes and is thought to facilitate or inhibit neuroplasticity. Combination of these approaches may result in an interaction of effects and a greater effect on function in individuals post-stroke than either approach used alone.