Noninvasive Brain Stimulation to Enhance Reading Comprehension Ability in Adults

The goal of this project is to address the urgent need for effective, scalable adult literacy interventions by integrating breakthroughs in two separate fields: 1.) the brain network science of resilience to reading disorders and 2.) high-definition non-invasive brain network stimulation. This study will first establish the efficacy of a novel, noninvasive stimulation protocol on reading behavior and brain metrics; then will determine how stimulation-induced effects interact with baseline reading comprehension ability; and lastly, will identify whether stimulation-induced effects are more clinically-beneficial than canonical behavioral interventions. Results may change the foundation for how we treat low adult literacy, and have the potential for wider reaching impacts on non-invasive stimulation protocols for other clinical disorders.

NCT Number	NCT05523505
Lead Sponsor	Vanderbilt University Collaborators: National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Conditions	Reading Disability
Enrollment	100 participants
Start Date	2022-11-07
Primary Completion	2026-09-10 (estimated)
Study Completion	2026-09-10 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2025-08-01