[ARTICLE] A review of transcranial electrical stimulation methods in stroke rehabilitation – Full Text

 

Abstract

Transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) uses direct or alternating current to non-invasively stimulate the brain. Neuronal activity in the brain is modulated by the electrical field according to the polarity of the current being applied. TES includes transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial random noise stimulation, and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). tDCS and tACS are the two non-invasive brain stimulation techniques that have been used alone or in combination with other rehabilitative therapies for the improvement of motor control in hemiparesis. Increasing research in these methods is being carried out to improvise on the existing technology because they have proven to exhibit a lasting effect, thereby contributing to brain plasticity and motor re-learning. Artificial stimulation of the lesioned or non-lesioned hemisphere induces participation of its cells when a movement is being performed. The devices are portable, stimulation is easy to deliver, and they are not known to cause any major side effects which are the foremost reasons for their trials in stroke rehabilitation. Recent research is focused on maximizing the outcome of stroke rehabilitation by combining them with other modalities. This review focuses on stimulation protocols, parameters, and the results obtained by these techniques and their combinations.

Key Message: Motor recovery and control poses a great challenge in stroke rehabilitation. Transcranial electrical stimulation methods look promising in this regard as they have been shown to augment long-term and short-term potentiation in the brain which may have a role in motor re-learning. This review discusses transcranial direct current stimulation and transcranial alternating current stimulation in stroke rehabilitation.

According to World Health Organization (WHO) statistics on 2016, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the foremost cause of death and adult disability worldwide.^[1],[2] Stroke statistics in India show that the incidence of stroke was 435/100,000 population and only one in three stroke survivors are hospitalized and given further rehabilitation because treatment is expensive.^[3]

Stroke survivors are faced with paralysis of one side of the body, that is, the side contra-lateral to the affected side in the brain. Rehabilitation aims at strengthening these muscles to prevent wastage and bring back function to the maximum possible extent. Taking the upper extremity into consideration, a combination of muscle over-activity (spastic muscle) in certain groups and weakening in other groups causes poor motor control leading to deformities and inability to reach, grasp, and release objects.

Various therapies such as splinting, stretching exercises, functional electrical stimulation (FES), and mirror therapy are being used to treat this condition, with varying degrees of success. In an ideal situation, the aim of stroke rehabilitation is to recover the paralyzed limb to an extent that it is functionally useful. In this context, recent research is being conducted in neuroplasticity or motor-relearning. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain being able to adapt to changes in response to its external environment and stimulation. TES and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) are the non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) methods that invoke this type of re-learning.^[4],[5]

NIBS methods include TMS and TES since they non-invasively stimulate the cortex. These methods are still under research for medical applications and were first introduced to treat psychiatric conditions such as insomnia, chronic anxiety, mild depression and post stroke aphasia.^[6],[7],[8] Recently, tDCS has also been tried on normal individuals and was shown to improve cognition, working memory, and performance.^{[9],[10],[11]} These methods are now gaining importance in stroke rehabilitation because they provide motor relearning probably through cortical reorganization, which occurs because the neural continuity between the brain and the periphery is intact.^[12]

This article attempts to review the stimulation protocols used for TES by various research groups and the results obtained. The first section begins with an introduction to non-invasive methods of brain stimulation followed by a brief summary on the history that led to the use of TES for stroke rehabilitation. Later sections deal with tDCS and tACS. The section on tDCS is further subdivided into tDCS alone and tDCS with adjuvant therapy. The tables give a list of the studies that have been carried out for neurorehabilitation, although it is not meant to be an exhaustive list.[…]

Continue —> A review of transcranial electrical stimulation methods in stroke rehabilitation Solomons CD, Shanmugasundaram V Neurol India

Figure 1: Placement of electrodes for a-tDCS and c-tDCS

[NEWS] Brain stimulation improves depression symptoms, restores brain waves in clinical study — ScienceDaily

Date: March 11, 2019

Source: University of North Carolina Health Care

Summary: With a weak alternating electrical current sent through electrodes attached to the scalp, researchers successfully targeted a naturally occurring electrical pattern in a specific part of the brain and markedly improved depression symptoms in about 70 percent of participants in a clinical study.

FULL STORY

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With a weak alternating electrical current sent through electrodes attached to the scalp, UNC School of Medicine researchers successfully targeted a naturally occurring electrical pattern in a specific part of the brain and markedly improved depression symptoms in about 70 percent of participants in a clinical study.

The research, published in Translational Psychiatry, lays the groundwork for larger research studies to use a specific kind of electrical brain stimulation called transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to treat people diagnosed with major depression.

“We conducted a small study of 32 people because this sort of approach had never been done before,” said senior author Flavio Frohlich, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Carolina Center for Neurostimulation. “Now that we’ve documented how this kind of tACS can reduce depression symptoms, we can fine tune our approach to help many people in a relatively inexpensive, noninvasive way.”

Frohlich, who joined the UNC School of Medicine in 2011, is a leading pioneer in this field who also published the first clinical trials of tACS in schizophrenia and chronic pain.

His tACS approach is unlike the more common brain stimulation technique called transcranial direct stimulation (tDCS), which sends a steady stream of weak electricity through electrodes attached to various parts of the brain. That approach has had mixed results in treating various conditions, including depression. Frohlich’s tACS paradigm is newer and has not been investigated as thoroughly as tDCS. Frohlich’s approach focuses on each individual’s specific alpha oscillations, which appear as waves between 8 and 12 Hertz on an electroencephalogram (EEG). The waves in this range rise in predominance when we close our eyes and daydream, meditate, or conjure ideas — essentially when our brains shut out sensory stimuli, such as what we see, feel, and hear.

Previous research showed that people with depression featured imbalanced alpha oscillations; the waves were overactive in the left frontal cortex. Frohlich thought his team could target these oscillations to bring them back in synch with the alpha oscillations in the right frontal cortex. And if Frohlich’s team could achieve that, then maybe depression symptoms would be decreased.

His lab recruited 32 people diagnosed with depression and surveyed each participant before the study, according to the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), a standard measure of depression.

The participants were then separated into three groups. One group received the sham placebo stimulation — a brief electrical stimulus to mimic the sensation at the beginning of a tACS session. A control group received a 40-Hertz tACS intervention, well outside the range that the researchers thought would affect alpha oscillations. A third group received the treatment intervention — a 10-Hertz tACS electrical current that targeted each individual’s naturally occurring alpha waves. Each person underwent their invention for 40 minutes on five consecutive days. None of the participants knew which group they were in, and neither did the researchers, making this a randomized double-blinded clinical study — the gold standard in biomedical research. Each participant took the MADRS immediately following the five-day regimen, at two weeks, and again at four weeks.

Prior to the study, Frohlich set the primary outcome at four weeks, meaning that the main goal of the study was to assess whether tACS could bring each individual’s alpha waves back into balance and decrease symptoms of depression four weeks after the five-day intervention. He set this primary outcome because scientific literature on the study of tDCS also used the four-week mark.

Frohlich’s team found that participants in the 10-Hertz tACS group featured a decrease in alpha oscillations in the left frontal cortex; they were brought back in synch with the right side of the frontal cortex. But the researchers did not find a statistically significant decrease in depression symptoms in the 10-Hertz tACS group, as opposed to the sham or control groups at four weeks.

But when Frohlich’s team looked at data from two weeks after treatment, they found that 70 percent of people in the treatment group reported at least a 50 percent reduction of depression symptoms, according to their MADRS scores. This response rate was significantly higher than the one for the two other control groups. A few of the participants had such dramatic decreases that Frohlich’s team is currently writing case-studies on them. Participants in the placebo and control groups experienced no such reduction in symptoms.

“It’s important to note that this is a first-of-its kind study,” Frohlich said. “When we started this research with computer simulations and preclinical studies, it was unclear if we would see an effect in people days after tACS treatment — let alone if tACS could become a treatment for psychiatric illnesses. It was unclear what would happen if we treated people several days in a row or what effect we might see weeks later. So, the fact that we’ve seen such positive results from this study gives me confidence our approach could help many people with depression.”

Frohlich’s lab is currently recruiting for two similar follow-up studies.

Other authors of the Translational Psychiatry paper are co-first authors Morgan Alexander, study coordinator and graduate student, and Sankaraleengam Alagapan, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow, both in the department of psychiatry at UNC-Chapel Hill; David Rubinow, MD, the Assad Meymandi Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine; former UNC postdoctoral fellow Caroline Lustenberger, PhD; and Courtney Lugo and Juliann Mellin, both study coordinators at the UNC School of Medicine.

This research was funded through grants from the Brain Behavior Research Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the BRAIN Initiative, and the Foundation of Hope.

Frohlich holds joint appointments at UNC-Chapel Hill in the department of cell biology and physiology and the Joint UNC-NC State Department of Biomedical Engineering. He is also a member of the UNC Neuroscience Center.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by University of North Carolina Health Care. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Morgan L. Alexander, Sankaraleengam Alagapan, Courtney E. Lugo, Juliann M. Mellin, Caroline Lustenberger, David R. Rubinow, Flavio Fröhlich. Double-blind, randomized pilot clinical trial targeting alpha oscillations with transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). Translational Psychiatry, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41398-019-0439-0

 

via Brain stimulation improves depression symptoms, restores brain waves in clinical study — ScienceDaily

[Abstract] Basic and functional effects of transcranial Electrical Stimulation (tES)—An introduction

Highlights

– Clinical and research interest in noninvasive brain stimulation has grown exponentially.– Here, we present the main findings on the physiological basis of transcranial electric stimulation (tES).– In a second part, we discuss evidence for applications of tES in behavioral research and clinical settings.– We note several challenges which need to be addressed before extensive clinical use of tES.

Abstract

Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) has been gaining increased popularity in human neuroscience research during the last years. Among the emerging NIBS tools is transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), whose main modalities are transcranial direct, and alternating current stimulation (tDCS, tACS). In tES, a small current (usually less than 3 mA) is delivered through the scalp. Depending on its shape, density, and duration, the applied current induces acute or long-lasting effects on excitability and activity of cerebral regions, and brain networks. tES is increasingly applied in different domains to (a) explore human brain physiology with regard to plasticity, and brain oscillations, (b) explore the impact of brain physiology on cognitive processes, and (c) treat clinical symptoms in neurological and psychiatric diseases. In this review, we give a broad overview of the main mechanisms and applications of these brain stimulation tools.

Source: Basic and functional effects of transcranial Electrical Stimulation (tES)—An introduction – ScienceDirect

[REVIEW] TRANSCRANIAL DIRECT CURRENT STIMULATION (tDCS) AND TRANSCRANIAL CURRENT ALTERNATING STIMULATION (tACS) REVIEW – Full Text PDF

Abstract

This literature review is aimed to explore the main technical characteristics of both transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) using the latest research on both healthy and impaired subjects. These techniques have no official standards developed yet. Our intent is to underline the main properties and problems linked with the application of those techniques which show diverse, and sometimes even opposite, results depending mainly on electrode positioning and underlying brain activity.
1 INTRODUCTION
Among different impairments that can affect standard brain functions, we choose to focus primarily on stroke, because it is one of the most prevalent and severe disability worldwide [1]. It is known that after a cerebrovascular accident, reorganization of neural tissues takes place [18]. If the ischemic event occurs on the motor area and it is severe enough to block the spontaneous neural reorganization, it could lead to paresis or even paralysis of one or more body parts [24].
In order to ameliorate stroke rehabilitation, different approaches have been carried out. Over the last decade, within the field of functional rehabilitation, transcranial current stimulation (tCS) has garnered considerable attention. It is assumed to improve, above other, motor functions in both healthy and stroke individuals [25], [4], [23].
There are three different types of tCS: transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) and random noise stimulation (tRNS). All of them are non-invasive and involve low intensity current induction into the brain. Some studies have investi
gated the physiological basis of tDCS and tACS in order to get the picture of standard pattern that can be used for future research [36], [32].
This paper is oriented towards a broad audience who wants to understand the basic mechanisms of tDCS and tACS techniques. The main parameters of each type of stimulation and the implications related to its application on healthy subjects, stroke patients and individuals with unusual brain oscillations are discussed.

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