Transcranial direct current stimulation for the treatment of depression

Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2010;13(1):61-9.

A double-blind, sham-controlled trial of transcranial direct current stimulation for the treatment of depression

Loo CK, Sachdev P, Martin D, Pigot M, Alonzo A, Malhi GS, Lagopoulos J, Mitchell P.

School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. colleen.loo@unsw.edu.au

Two recent sham-controlled studies found that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was an effective treatment for depression. As tDCS is painless, relatively safe and inexpensive, its efficacy in treating depression warrants further investigation. This double-blind, randomized study tested tDCS at the same stimulation parameters as a previous positive study (1 mA current strength, five treatment sessions, active or sham, given on alternate days) in 40 depressed participants. Anodal stimulation was centred over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, with the cathode placed on the lateral aspect of the contralateral orbit. tDCS was continued up to a total of ten active sessions per participant. Mood outcomes were measured by psychiatrist raters blind to treatment condition using the Montgomery-Asberg and other depression rating scales. Psychomotor speed was assessed immediately before and after a single tDCS session and attention, frontal executive function, working memory and verbal learning were assessed after each group of five sessions. Overall depression scores improved significantly over ten tDCS treatments, but there was no between-group difference in the five-session, sham-controlled phase. tDCS was found to be safe, with no adverse effects on neuropsychological function, and only minor side-effects. It is recommended that the efficacy of tDCS in depression be further evaluated over a longer treatment period, using enhanced stimulation parameters.

PMID: 19671217 [PubMed - in process]

Brain Stimulation in Depression Blog

There is an interesting weblog of Douglas Mental Health University Institute @ McGill which is certainly interesting for the readers of this Blog. Here is the description:

Marcelo T. Berlim, MD, MSc, a researcher and clinical psychiatrist at the Douglas, presents the latest scientific information regarding the use of brain stimulation techniques in major depression, such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), deep brain stimulation (DBS), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and vagus nerve stimulation (VNS).
This blog is a resource for mental health professionals, including researchers and is not intended to provide medical consultation/referral and/or personal clinical advices.

You can connect here or in the linklist to the left.

Transcranial Stimulation Improves Memory in Alzheimer's Disease

By Will Boggs, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Aug 22 - Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improves recognition in patients with Alzheimer disease, according to a report in the August 12th issue of Neurology.

"Our preliminary data on Alzheimer's disease patients are promising as we observed beneficial effects after a single tDCS session, suggesting that chronic daily application might induce even greater improvement," Dr. Alberto Priori from the University of Milan told Reuters Health. "Our studies encourage broader research programs using different stimulation protocols and longer clinical follow-up to clarify the impact therapy might have on patients' daily functional activities."

Dr. Priori and colleagues investigated whether anodal tDCS (which generally increases the function of the underlying areas of the cerebral cortex) applied over the temporoparietal cortex could improve recognition memory in 10 patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Anodal tDCS significantly improved word recognition memory accuracy, the authors report, whereas cathodal tDCS (which generally suppresses the function of the underlying cerebral cortex) significantly worsened it. Sham tDCS had no impact on memory.

The results were similar after correcting memory performance for guessing, the report indicates.

Neither anodal tDCS nor cathodal tDCS induced specific changes in the attention task, compared with sham tDCS, the researchers note.

"Interestingly," the investigators say, "the tDCS-induced improvement in the word recognition test we observed in patients with Alzheimer's disease is comparable to the 16% improvement induced by long-term pharmacologic treatment with cholinesterase inhibitors."

"We are assessing possible long-lasting effects of tDCS in Alzheimer's disease patients using repeated session protocols in a larger sample with longer clinical follow-up," Dr. Priori said.

"We believe that the best results, especially in Alzheimer's disease patients, could be obtained by combining tDCS with cognitive rehabilitation," Dr. Priori added.

Neurology 2008;71:493-498.