Patients made three times as much progress following speech and language therapy if their brains had first been stimulated with a magnetic coil.
The non-invasive technique was used to temporarily shut down properly functioning parts of the brain so that the side which had been damaged by the stroke could relearn language.
Brain stimulation should be offered within five weeks of a patient suffering a stroke because genes which allow the brain to recover are most active early on, researchers said.
The therapy is aimed at patients with aphasia, a disorder which affects two or three in every 10 stroke sufferers and lowers their ability to understand and use language.
Until now speech and language therapy has been the only form of treatment, but researchers from McGill University in Canada could be used in conjunction to improve patients’ recovery.