Journal of the neurological sciences
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Randomized Controlled Trial
At-home tDCS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex improves visual short-term memory in mild vascular dementia.
Previous studies have shown that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) led to an improvement of various cognitive functions in patients with Alzheimer dementia, early affected by short-term memory deficits. Since this approach has not been evaluated in the context of vascular dementia, which rather affects the velocity of cognitive responses, we aimed at improving these functions by applying repetitive sessions of anodal tDCS. ⋯ In patients with mild vascular dementia, anodal tDCS of the left DLPFC is able to produce additional effects to cognitive training on visual short-term memory, verbal working memory, and executive control.