Brain Stimul
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Enhancement of Cortical Excitability and Lower Limb Motor Function in Patients With Stroke by Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation.
Motor dysfunction in the lower limbs is a common sequela in stroke patients. ⋯ Combination anodal tDCS and conservative physical therapy appears to be a beneficial therapeutic modality for improving motor function in the lower limbs in patients with subacute stroke.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Slow-oscillatory Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Modulates Memory in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy by Altering Sleep Spindle Generators: A Possible Rehabilitation Tool.
Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is often associated with memory deficits. Given the putative role for sleep spindles memory consolidation, spindle generators skewed toward the affected lobe in TLE subjects may be a neurophysiological marker of defective memory. Slow-oscillatory transcranial direct current stimulation (sotDCS) during slow waves sleep (SWS) has previously been shown to enhance sleep-dependent memory consolidation by increasing slow-wave sleep and modulating sleep spindles. ⋯ Anodal sotDCS over the affected temporal lobe improves declarative and visuospatial memory performance by modulating slow sleep spindles cortical source generators. SotDCS appears a promising tool for memory rehabilitation in people with TLE.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The ACDC pilot trial: targeting the anterior cingulate by double cone coil rTMS for the treatment of depression.
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the dorsolateral-prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) with conventional figure-of-8 (=butterfly) coils has been used as an antidepressant therapeutic tool for almost twenty years. Very recently, an innovative rTMS coil, the so-called double cone coil (DC), was introduced allowing the modulation of the anterior cingulate cortex (AC). We investigated safety and therapeutic effectiveness of this stimulation in a naturalistic clinical setting. ⋯ This pilot study demonstrated the feasibility of ACDC-rTMS-stimulation as an add-on-treatment for depression. Its clinical effects warrant further investigation in the future.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Electroencephalographic effects of transcranial random noise stimulation in the auditory cortex.
Transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) is an innovative technique of non-invasive electrical stimulation. tRNS over the parietal cortex has improved cognitive function in healthy controls and, applied to the auditory cortex, tRNS has shown beneficial effects on tinnitus. ⋯ Our finding of tRNS induced increased excitability in the auditory cortex parallels previous findings of tRNS effects on motor cortex excitability and is in line with current concepts of tRNS mechanisms such as increase of stochastic resonance.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Inter-subject variability of LTD-like plasticity in human motor cortex: a matter of preceding motor activation.
Continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) of the human primary motor cortex (M1) induces long-term depression (LTD)-like plastic changes in corticospinal excitability, but several studies have reported high inter-subject variability of this effect. Most studies use a tonic voluntary contraction of the target muscle before cTBS to set stimulation intensity; however, it is unclear how this might affect response variability. ⋯ cTBS induces consistent LTD-like plasticity with low inter-subject variability if pre-activation of the stimulated motor cortex is avoided. This affirms a translational potential of cTBS in clinical applications that aim at reducing cortical excitability.