Simione Meg, Fregni Felipe, Green Jordan R
Department of Pediatrics, MassGeneral Hospital for Children, Boston, MA, United States.
Spaulding-Labuschagne Neuromodulation Center, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston, MA, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2018 Feb 13;12:33. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00033. eCollection 2018.
Motor cortex transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been shown to enhance motor learning in healthy adults as well as various neurological conditions. However, there has been limited data on whether tDCS enhances jaw motor performance during different oral behaviors such as speech, maximum syllable repetition, and chewing. Because the effects of anodal and cathodal stimulation are known to be dependent on task demands, we hypothesized that tDCS would have a distinct effect on the jaw motor performance during these disparate oral behaviors. Ten healthy adults completed speech, maximum syllable repetition, and chewing tasks as their jaw movements were recorded using 3D optical motion capture during sham, anodal, and cathodal tDCS. Our findings showed that compared to the sham condition, jaw displacements during speech and syllable repetition were smaller during anodal stimulation, but larger during cathodal stimulation for syllable repetition and chewing indicating improved performance during anodal tDCS. On the other hand, there were no effects of anodal tDCS during chewing. These results confirm our hypotheses that: (1) tDCS induces a significant effect on jaw motor function; (2) its effects are polarity dependent; and (3) its effects are dependent on the task demands on jaw motor function. These findings support future studies exploring the effects of tDCS on persons with oral sensorimotor impairments and the development of therapeutic protocols.
运动皮层经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）已被证明可增强健康成年人以及各种神经疾病患者的运动学习能力。然而，关于tDCS在诸如言语、最大音节重复和咀嚼等不同口腔行为中是否能增强下颌运动表现的数据有限。由于已知阳极和阴极刺激的效果取决于任务需求，我们推测tDCS在这些不同的口腔行为中对下颌运动表现会有不同的影响。十名健康成年人在进行假刺激、阳极刺激和阴极刺激的tDCS期间，通过3D光学运动捕捉记录其下颌运动，完成言语、最大音节重复和咀嚼任务。我们的研究结果表明，与假刺激条件相比，在阳极刺激期间，言语和音节重复过程中的下颌位移较小，但在阴极刺激期间，音节重复和咀嚼时的下颌位移较大，这表明阳极tDCS期间表现有所改善。另一方面，在咀嚼过程中阳极tDCS没有效果。这些结果证实了我们的假设：（1）tDCS对下颌运动功能有显著影响；（2）其效果取决于极性；（3）其效果取决于对下颌运动功能的任务需求。这些发现为未来探索tDCS对口腔感觉运动障碍患者的影响以及治疗方案的开发研究提供了支持。
