Variability in response to transcranial direct current stimulation of the motor cortex.
By Sarah Wiethoff, Masashi Hamada, John C. Rothwell. Brain Stimulation, 2014
758 citations recorded by the source corpus.
BACKGROUND Responses to a number of different plasticity-inducing brain stimulation protocols are highly variable. However there is little data available on the variability of response to transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS). OBJECTIVE We tested the effects of TDCS over the motor cortex on corticospinal excitability. We also examined whether an individual's response could be predicted from measurements of onset latency of motor evoked potential (MEP) following stimulation with different orientations of monophasic transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). METHODS Fifty-three healthy subjects participated in a crossover-design. Baseline latency measurements with different coil orientations and MEPs were recorded from the first dorsal interosseous muscle prior to the application of 10 min of 2 mA TDCS (0.057 mA/cm2). Thirty MEPs were measured every 5 min for up to half an hour after the intervention to assess after-effects on corticospinal excitability. RESULTS Anodal TDCS at 2 mA facilitated MEPs whereas there was no significant effect of 2 mA cathodal TDCS. A two-step cluster analysis suggested that approximately 50% individuals had only a minor, or no response to TDCS whereas the remainder had a facilitatory effect to both forms of stimulation. There was a significant correlation between the latency difference of MEPs (anterior-posterior stimulation minus latero-medial stimulation) and the response to anodal, but not cathodal TDCS. CONCLUSIONS The large variability in response to these TDCS protocols is in line with similar studies using other forms of non-invasive brain stimulation. The effects highlight the need to develop more robust protocols, and understand the individual factors that determine responsiveness.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurology, Surgery
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/47daee3577e8098da7e91a9b4a263fac206d8bec
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Cognitive Neuroscience
- Michael A. Nitsche
- Walter Paulus
- C. J. Stagg
- Felipe Fregni
- David Liebetanz
- Leonardo G. Cohen
- Andrea Antal
- Ulf Ziemann
In Neurology
- Michael A. Nitsche
- Walter Paulus
- Felipe Fregni
- Leonardo G. Cohen
- C. J. Stagg
- Ulf Ziemann
- David Liebetanz
- Andrea Antal
In Surgery
Citations in the corpus
- Evidence-based guidelines on the therapeutic use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). (2017, background): “Personalized therapeutic application of brain stimulation techniques might be developed in the future, especially in the light of new findings, which show profound interindividual variability of cortical excitability changes in response to cortical stimulation using tDCS (Lopez-Alonso et al., 2014, ”
- A technical guide to tDCS, and related non-invasive brain stimulation tools (2015, background): “(López-Alonso et al., 2014; Wiethoff et al., 2014) and the fact that differences in experimental protocols such as stimulation intensity or use of different versions of the same or different behavioural 1032 A.”