Social and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory and Developmental Disorders Program, Center for Health and Biological Sciences, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Centro Clinico per la Neurostimolazione, le Neurotecnologie ed i Disordini del Movimento, Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Milano, Italy; Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze Neurologiche, Milano, Italy.
Brain Stimul. 2012 Jul;5(3):223-230. doi: 10.1016/j.brs.2011.06.006. Epub 2011 Jul 27.
Immediately after patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) receive a single anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) session their memory performance improves. Whether multiple tDCS sessions improve memory performance in the longer term remains unclear.
In this study we aimed to assess memory changes after five consecutive sessions of anodal tDCS applied over the temporal cortex in patients with AD.
A total of 15 patients were enrolled in two centers. Cognitive functions were evaluated before and after therapeutic tDCS. tDCS was delivered bilaterally through two scalp anodal electrodes placed over the temporal regions and a reference electrode over the right deltoid muscle. The stimulating current was set at 2 mA intensity and was delivered for 30 minutes per day for 5 consecutive days.
After patients received tDCS, their performance in a visual recognition memory test significantly improved. We found a main effect of tDCS on memory performance, i.e., anodal stimulation improved it by 8.99% from baseline, whereas sham stimulation decreased it by 2.62%. tDCS failed to influence differentially general cognitive performance measures or a visual attention measure.
Our findings show that after patients with AD receive anodal tDCS over the temporal cerebral cortex in five consecutive daily sessions their visual recognition memory improves and the improvement persists for at least 4 weeks after therapy. These encouraging results provide additional support for continuing to investigate anodal tDCS as an adjuvant treatment for patients with AD.
阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者接受单次阳极经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）后，其记忆表现立即改善。多次 tDCS 治疗是否能在更长时间内改善记忆表现尚不清楚。
本研究旨在评估 AD 患者连续 5 次颞叶皮质阳极 tDCS 治疗后记忆变化。
共有 15 名患者在两个中心入组。在治疗性 tDCS 前后评估认知功能。tDCS 通过放置在颞区的两个头皮阳极电极和放置在右三角肌上的参考电极进行双侧传递。刺激电流设定为 2 mA 强度，每天 30 分钟，连续 5 天。
患者接受 tDCS 后，其视觉识别记忆测试的表现显著改善。我们发现 tDCS 对记忆表现有主要影响，即阳极刺激使其从基线提高了 8.99%，而假刺激使其降低了 2.62%。tDCS 未能对一般认知表现测量或视觉注意力测量产生差异影响。
我们的发现表明，AD 患者连续 5 天接受颞叶皮质阳极 tDCS 治疗后，其视觉识别记忆得到改善，并且这种改善至少在治疗后 4 周内持续存在。这些令人鼓舞的结果为继续研究阳极 tDCS 作为 AD 患者的辅助治疗提供了额外的支持。
