Conclusions: Anodal tDCS applied over the affected pharyngeal motor cortex can enhance the outcome of swallowing training in post-stroke dysphagia. Our results suggest that non-invasive cortical stimulation has a potential role as an adjuvant strategy during swallowing training in patients with post-stroke dysphagia.
via Effects of transcranial direct curren… [Restor Neurol Neurosci. 2012] – PubMed – NCBI.
Results: Auditory verbal hallucinations were robustly reduced by tDCS relative to sham stimulation, with a mean diminution of 31% SD=14; d=1.58, 95% CI=0.76–2.40. The beneficial effect on hallucinations lasted for up to 3 months. The authors also observed an amelioration with tDCS of other symptoms as measured by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale d=0.98, 95% CI=0.22–1.73, especially for the negative and positive dimensions. No effect was observed on the dimensions of disorganization or grandiosity/excitement.
Conclusions: Although this study is limited by the small sample size, the results show promise for treating refractory auditory verbal hallucinations and other selected manifestations of schizophrenia.
Is there anybody willing to help with writing tDCS info resource ?
I started here https://brmlab.cz/project/brain_hacking/tdcs but is a task for comunity no one person , i planed to copy this info to GoFlow wiki when it started.
Almoust everyone underestimate the complexicity of tDCS and posible risk from long term use.
Punchdrunk in Berlin? tDCS study recruiting participants.
Concussed athlethes have discrete decreased abilities in motor learning. Recent research could further show, that cortical plasticity, as measured by transcranial magnetic stimulation TMS is reduced. This is possibly due to an increased GABAergic activity, what have been found in concussed athletes by paired pulse protocols in TMS.GABAergic acitivty can be modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation tDCS in a polar-specific manner: anodal tDCS was able to decrease GABA, whereas cathodal tDCS increased tDCS.Our study aimes to assess the influence of anodal tDCS on cortical plsticity in concussed athlethes. We hypothesize, that anodal tDCS is able to increase cortical plsticity in concussed athlethes.
In a recent paper in Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience, Sela and colleagues 2012 used tACS to investigate the effects of oscillatory prefrontal theta stimulation, a frequency involved in regulatory control during decision-making processes Sela et al., 2012. Subjects performed a modified version of the Balloon Analog Risk Task BART, Lejuez et al., 2004. In this task, volunteers pump a balloon without knowing when it will explode. The more the pump button is pressed, the more points accumulate while at the same time the risk of losing points with a balloon explosion increases. Subjects are thus pressured to decide whether to adopt a risky behavior and keep pumping, or to use a more conservative strategy and stop. tACS was delivered to three groups of healthy volunteers. One group received stimulation over the left prefrontal cortex lPFC, one over the right prefrontal cortex rPFC, and the other received sham stimulation. tACS was delivered online during the task. Stimulation started 5 minutes before the task began and lasted for approximately 10 minutes until the BART was completed. Crucially, active tACS was only delivered at a theta frequency of 6.5 Hz. Sham stimulation involved the same parameters, but was only delivered for 30 s. Results showed a striking effect of lPFC stimulation, whereas rPFC and sham stimulations failed to produce any considerable effect on task performance. More specifically, the increase of sequential losses during tACS stimulation over lPFC suggested that volunteers lost the ability to adjust their actions based on negative feedback. Sela et al. 2012 hypothesized that theta stimulation of the lPFC interfered with volunteers’ performance during the task, making them more inclined to adopt a risky behavior.
This is one of the applications of tDCS I’ve been waiting to hear about. I was hoping tDCS might help facilitate an active dreaming state or even lucid dreaming.
Conclusions
In summary, using two different methodologies it appears that tDCS had no effect on the presence of dream reports with visual imagery or measures of dream quality. However, this may be due to methodological limitations of these stud- ies, as the delivery methods employed allowed only low levels of tDCS to be delivered without waking participants. Improvements allowing higher levels of stimulation during sleep and stimulation of other cortical regions could poten- tially provide more definitive conclusions regarding the ef- fectiveness of tDCS on dream imagery reported from REM sleep.
Abstract
Investigation of visual dream reports after tran- scranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) during REM sleep (pdf)
According to the team’s computational models, tDCS delivers a therapeutic current along the brain’s pain network, a collection of interconnected brain regions involved in perceiving and regulating pain. The team says the technology seems to reverse ingrained changes in the brain caused by chronic migraine, such as greater sensitivity to headache triggers.
The improvements accumulated over the four weeks of treatment, with the effects lasting for months. The only side effect reported by the test subjects was a mild tingling sensation experienced when receiving the treatment. Professor Bikson says a patient could potentially use the system every day to ward off attacks, or periodically, like a booster shot.
“You can walk around with it and keep it in your desk drawer or purse. This is definitely the first technology that operates on just a 9-volt battery and can be applied at home,” said Bikson, who envisions the future development of units as small as an iPod.
via Gizmag – Mild electrical current found to prevent migraine attacks.
Assessing the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on cognition in patients with disorder of consciousness.
Download Pdf
Illustration links to pdf download
The aim of this study was to assess whether anodal tDCS could reduce inhibitory interactions within the human visual cortex. Psychophysical measures of surround suppression were used as an index of inhibition within V1. Overlay suppression, which is thought to originate within the lateral geniculate nucleus LGN, was also measured as a control. Anodal stimulation of the occipital poles significantly reduced psychophysical surround suppression, but had no effect on overlay suppression. This effect was specific to anodal stimulation as cathodal stimulation had no effect on either measure. These psychophysical results provide the first evidence for tDCS-induced reductions of intracortical inhibition within the human visual cortex.
A small portable tDCS device would be safe, effective and easy to use, according to Dr. Marom Bikson, associate professor of biomedical engineering at CCNY. “We developed this technology and methodology in order to get the currents deep into the brain,” said Bikson. “You can walk around with it and keep it in your desk drawer or purse. This is definitely the first technology that operates on just a 9-volt battery and can be applied at home.”
Bikson foresees tDCS units as tiny as an iPod that patients can use every day to ward off attacks. A consumer-ready portable tDCS device is still years away, since large clinical trials would be needed.
In a pilot study conducted by Bikson, repeated tDCS sessions reduced the duration and pain intensity of migraine attacks by about 37 percent. Increasing improvements were noted after four weeks of treatment and the positive effects lasted for months. A mild tingling sensation during the electrical brain stimulation treatment was the only side effect.
“There’s something about migraine pain that’s particularly distressing,” said Bikson. “If it’s possible to help some people get just 30 percent better, that’s a very meaningful improvement in quality of life.”
Bikson says tDCS seems to reverse changes in the brain caused by repeated migraine attacks, including greater sensitivity to headaches triggers. He believes a patient could use a portable TDCS system every day to ward off attacks.
via Electrical Brain Stimulation Eases Migraines Without Drugs | American News Report.
“We think it probably works by re-setting the activity levels of those nerve cells which tend to be reduced when you’re depressed.” Colleen Loo
From Black Dog Institute, Sydney, Australia
We are looking for:
- People aged over 18
- People who have been experiencing feelings of depression for at least 4 weeks prior to study
- People able to commit to the trial for at least 4 weeks with the option of additional further treatment, attending usually for 40 minutes every weekday.
For more information call 02 9382 3720 or email TMSandDCS@unsw.edu.au
Watch a demonstration of DCS with a real patient
- Watch part 1 (1 minute)
- Watch part 2 (30 seconds)
- Watch a presentation by the director of the study
Download the flyer [PDF, 52KB]
Petr dropped me a line with an update on what brmlab has been up to lately. Wow! Check out the photo album. Very interesting collection of crew and gadgets. Here he is with an early version of his tDCS device.
He also pointed me to the focus. I don’t know how I’d missed it. Unfortunately (for me)…
Due to F.D.A. requirements the focus v1 is not currently available for sale in the United States. If you live in the U.S. and would like to buy a focus device, please pre-register. If there is sufficient demand from U.S. customers we will seek the necessary certification.
I think we can expect a lot of that. But how cool! You can sign up for ‘priority access’ on their site.
One of the things Petr and I discussed is objective testing for use in determining whether or not a tDCS device is actually doing anything. Petr came up with some great links. Both PEBL Psychological Test Battery and Brain Workshop – a Dual N-Back game, seem to be tests you download to your own computer. But I’ve just spent the last 20 minutes doing tests on a site called Quantified Mind. Except for the Google (only) login, it’s about perfect. A nice collection of tests and the results are collected very nicely into a statistics page that associates with your account. Cool! [Update 5/25/12] Another interesting candidate for measuring effectiveness. Lumosity research partners include Stanford and Harvard. A very basic reaction time test, HumanBenchMark.com.
Petr also mentioned that he corresponded with the GoFlow people and they are going to set up a wiki. In their recent email they announced they were a little bit behind and were waiting to hear back from Kickstarter. But that whether or not they get Kickstarter approval they’ll be moving forward soon.
All for now.
JH
This study aimed to investigate this behavioral facilitation in the context of a learning paradigm by giving tDCS over rIFG repetitively over four consecutive days of training on a behavioral inhibition task (stop signal task (SST)). Twenty-two participants took part; ten participants were assigned to receive anodal tDCS (1.5 mA, 15 min), 12 were assigned to receive training but not active stimulation. There was a significant effect of training on learning and performance in the SST, and the integration of the training and rIFG-tDCS produced a more linear learning slope. Better performance was also found in the active stimulation group. Our findings show that tDCS-combined cognitive training is an effective tool for improving the ability to inhibit responses. The current study could constitute a step toward the use of tDCS and cognitive training as a therapeutic tool for cognitive control impairments in conditions such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or schizophrenia.
Our results indicate that only anodal stimulation of the left prefrontal cortex, but not cathodal stimulation of left DLPFC or anodal stimulation of M1, increases the accuracy of the task performance when compared to sham stimulation of the same area. This accuracy enhancement during active stimulation cannot be accounted for by slowed responses, as response times were not changed by stimulation. Our results indicate that left prefrontal anodal stimulation leads to an enhancement of working memory performance. Furthermore, this effect depends on the stimulation polarity and is specific to the site of stimulation. This result may be helpful to develop future interventions aiming at clinical benefits.
via Experimental Brain Research, Volume 166, Number 1 – SpringerLink.
The aim of this study was to assess the differences in the effects induced by tDCS applied to frontal and temporo-parietal areas on phonemic and semantic fluency functional networks in patients with PD.
Method
Sixteen patients were randomized to receive tDCS to left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left temporo-parietal cortex (TPC) in a counterbalanced order. Immediately following stimulation, patients underwent a verbal fluency paradigm inside a fMRI scanner. Changes induced by tDCS in activation and deactivation task-related pattern networks were studied using free-model independent component analyses (ICA).
Results
Functional connectivity in verbal fluency and deactivation task-related networks was significantly more enhanced by tDCS to DLPFC than to TPC. In addition, DLPFC tDCS increased performance on the phonemic fluency task, after adjusting for baseline phonemic performance.
Conclusions
These findings provide evidence that tDCS to specific brain regions induces changes in large scale functional networks that underlay behavioural effects, and suggest that tDCS might be useful to enhance phonemic fluency in PD.
