Brain Stimul
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Some repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) techniques fail to facilitate cortical excitability in the human visual cortex. A more effective and facilitatory method is needed to increase the feasibility of rTMS to explore visual cortex function. ⋯ Modulation of VEP recovery by rPPS suggested that rPPS exhibited a disinhibitory effect on the visual cortex.
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Recent studies revealed that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) may improve verbal working memory (WM) performance in humans. In the present study, we evaluated executive attention, which is the core of WM capacity, considered to be significantly involved in tasks that require active maintenance of memory representations in interference-rich conditions, and is highly dependent on DLPFC function. ⋯ Our findings support the idea that lateralized stimulation effects in high verbal WM load may be gender-dependent. Further, our post-stimulation results support the idea that increased left hemisphere activity may be important for encoding verbal information into episodic memory as well as for facilitating retrieval of context-specific targets from semantic memory.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Pharyngeal electrical stimulation for dysphagia associated with multiple sclerosis: a pilot study.
Treatment options for dysphagia associated with multiple sclerosis (MS) are currently limited. In this study we investigated whether intraluminal electrical pharyngeal stimulation facilitates swallowing recovery in dysphagic MS patients. ⋯ No specific treatment for oro-pharyngeal dysphagia related to MS has been described to date. Our preliminary findings suggest a potential benefit of intraluminal electrical pharyngeal stimulation for the treatment of dysphagia caused by MS.
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Previous research on hemispatial neglect has provided evidence for dissociable mechanisms for egocentric and allocentric processing. Although a few studies have examined whether tDCS to posterior parietal cortex can be beneficial for attentional processing in neurologically intact individuals, none have examined the potential effect of tDCS on allocentric and/or egocentric processing. ⋯ Our study suggests that right anodal/left cathodal tDCS has a facilitatory effect on allocentric visuospatial processing, and might be useful as a therapeutic technique for individuals suffering from allocentric neglect.
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Continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) suppresses the excitability of motor networks responsible for generating motor evoked potentials (MEPs), and may also modulates the excitability of inhibitory motor networks. However, its effects on intracortical inhibition are modest in comparison to the effects on MEPs. The repeated, spaced, application of cTBS protocols results in more MEP suppression than seen with a single cTBS protocol, but whether this approach is also effective at modulating intracortical inhibition has not been tested. ⋯ Although the repeated application of cTBS protocols may be effective for enhancing modulation of the MEP-generating excitatory motor networks, these findings suggest that this approach offers little advantage when targeting intracortical inhibitory networks.