Category Archives: Paper

This Procedure May Improve Your Brain — and Uncover the Real You – NYTimes.com

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The real you?

Sally Adee, who tried tDCS as part of an article she reported at The New Scientist, was featured on Radiolab’s episode and later wrote a personal essay about the treatment. The shocks made her feel “like I had just had an excellent cup of coffee, but without the caffeine jitters. I felt clear-headed and like myself, just sharper. Calmer. Without fear and without doubt.”
That clarity was emotionally profound: For days after the treatment, her mind was free of the nagging voices of self-doubt and fear that she realized she lived with daily.
Talking with Mr. Abumrad on his show, she said: “I was this person I hadn’t experienced before, and I thought maybe this is the actual core person who I am when all my baggage isn’t weighing on me. It was like somebody had wiped a really steamy window and I was able to look at the world for what it was.”

via This Procedure May Improve Your Brain — and Uncover the Real You – NYTimes.com.

Using Noninvasive Brain Stimulation to Accelerate Learning and Enhance Human Performance

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Before you strap a tDCS device on your head in order to learn something new, have you studied Spaced Repetition or Interleaving? Have you mastered software like Anki? Or language learning techniques? As the paper quoted below makes so clear, tDCS adds another very complex set of variables to the notion of accelerated learning. While it may be practical for the military to be pursuing optimized tDCS-enhanced training methods for very specific skill sets, I do think we’re years away from practical DIY learning protocols involving tDCS.

Although tDCS shows promise as a training method, important questions remain unanswered. To maximize effects on training, optimal stimulation schedules i.e., every day, twice a week, etc. need to be determined. Juvina, Jastrzembski, and McKinley 2013 used a computational modeling approach to predict the optimal tDCS scheduling, but empirical validation is required. Second, at what point in training should tDCS be applied? One study showed that tDCS was more beneficial in the early phases of training Bullard et al., 2011, whereas another showed benefits at all stages McKinley et al., 2013. Importantly, these studies involved different learning tasks, so it is possible that the optimal time point for tDCS efficacy is task dependent. Likewise, different electrode placements may be optimal for different stages of learning. Third, how long is the learned information retained, and does this change with repeated doses of tDCS? Initial evidence suggests that tDCS-induced improvements in learning are retained for at least 24 hr Falcone et al., 2012; however, there is little evidence of exactly how long the new knowledge is retained. Finally, the “gold standard” of any training technique is not only whether it is effective in accelerating learning on a particular task but whether its effects transfer to others tasks within the same cognitive domain Dahlin, Neely, Larsson, Backman, & Nyberg, 2008; Strenziok et al., 2014. TDCS will ultimately need to be held to this high standard

via Using Noninvasive Brain Stimulation to Accelerate Learning and Enhance Human Performance.
Download the pdf: Using Noninvasive Brain Stimulation to Accelerate Learning and Enhance Human Performance

Halo Neuroscience – Amol Sarva

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 Here’s the point of it all… remember the cancer and the climate change and everything. What if you could help people solve those problems? What if there was a thing, that you could do, that in just a few minutes would change the way our best computer works? And this is the thing that I’ve been working on.

Doing a little detective work today in an attempt to better understand Halo Neuroscience.
In this video, from June, 2013, Halo Neuroscience co-founder Amol Sarva (with Daniel Chao & Brett Wingeier) talks about his new company. He mentions that they are testing a prototype, and that while their eventual target audience is anyone with a brain… “We’re going to start by working on people who are not well, people who have had some problems, to help them restore some of their brain function.”

“This is not something that we’re launching on a website for people to buy, at all. But we’re developing a very important new technology that we think is going to have huge impact on the way people’s minds work.”…”In the lab we’ve been working on it now for quite some time and we’ve built five or six generations of the device.” Dec 9, 2013

The 9-dots test, Bingo! The inspiration is Alan Snyder and his ‘inner savant‘ and an article Amol read 13 years earlier (before his fantastic success with Peek and smartphones). And the ‘vision’. March 19, 2014  This is the video from which the opening quote is taken.

In another talk at DLD Jan 21, 2014, Amol mentions that they are now doing double-blind studies and uses this slide to demonstrate. Anyone recognize this particular test suite?amolSarvaDld2014

It would appear that Amol is the visionary at the core of Halo Neuroscience, but the team reads like a who’s who of Silicon Valley. I’ll follow-up with a look at some of the other team members soon.

Halo, The Brain-Improving Wearable, Raises $1.5 Million | TechCrunch

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A few weeks ago a new player came on to the scene (for me anyway) via an article, Halo headband wants to make you smarter by shocking your brain. Interesting, but kind of vague. TheVerge’s Ben Popper subtitled it A far-fetched gadget has backing from the tech industry’s biggest investor. Exactly. Today I got around to looking at the HaloNeuro website, basically a place-holder webpage, except for the team. What sort of ‘headband’ would warrant such a distinguished collection of Silicon Valley heavyweights?

Daniel S. Chao, M.D., M.S. – CEO
Former head of business development at NeuroPace, McKinsey consultant, and co-founder and CEO of Lumos Catheter Systems. Stanford M.D. and M.S. in neuroscience

Brett Wingeier, Ph.D.
Former principal engineer and clinical scientist at NeuroPace. US Registered Patent Agent, named on 16 US patents. Biomedical engineering doctorate with studies at Tulane, Stanford, and Swinburne

Amol Sarva, Ph.D.
Former CEO, founder of Peek, McKinsey consultant, co-founder of Virgin Mobile USA. Doctorate with dissertation in cognitive science from Stanford

Gary Abrams, M.D.
Director of Neurorehabilitation Clinic at UCSF Medical Center, Professor of Neurology

Shashi Upadhyay, Ph.D.
CEO at Lattice Engines. Former McKinsey consultant

Steve Lee
Director at Google X, Project Glass

Erick Tseng
Head of Mobile at Facebook, Board Director at Epocrates (EPOC), Advisory Board at HealthTap. Former first Product Manager for Android at Google, McKinsey consultant

Mario Schlosser
CEO of Oscar Insurance. Former CEO and co-founder Vostu, McKinsey consultant. M.S., CS Stanford

Mark George, M.D
Layton McCurdy Endowed Chair; Director, Brain Stimulation Laboratory at Medical University of South Carolina

Reed Hundt
Board Director of Intel, CEO of Coalition for Green Capital. Former Chairman of FCC under President Bill Clinton, Obama transition team, McKinsey senior adviser, Partner at Latham & Watkins

Anirudh Patni
Founder and Chairman, Agiliad. Former senior executive with Patni Systems, McKinsey consultant

They also just announced a recent round of funding!

While the thought of applying electricity directly to the brain in unsupervised conditions is, to some, a bit scary, Halo Neuroscience has gotten over a million smackers to allow you do just that. Halo, a company that will produce a wearable device to “boost brain function” has closed a $1.5 million round led by Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz and Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC.

Something is up in tDCS land.

via Halo, The Brain-Improving Wearable, Raises $1.5 Million | TechCrunch.

Scientists find switch for people to control their dreams – Vox

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HatTip to Jay who is working on a tDCS/lucid dreaming project of his own.
tACS is transcranial alternating current, significantly more complex, from what I gather than tDCS. But perhaps a DIY tACS device set to 40 Hz specifically won’t be out of the question for DIYers. As someone who spent months (unsuccessfully) doing lucid dreaming exercises I certainly would welcome the opportunity to experience lucid dreaming.

The new dream study (paywall), which was published May 11 in Nature Neuroscience, used a far less invasive method: electrodes temporarily placed at strategic locations on the scalp. The research involved 24 volunteers with no history of lucid dreaming. The subjects went to sleep and eventually dreamed. Then, researchers turned on a 30-second-long electrical signal and then woke them up and asked them about their experiences. It turned out that a 40 Hz stimulation induced lucid dreams 77 percent of the time.

You can’t objectively measure a dream, though. So how did researchers know that the subjects weren’t just making it up? For one, the electrical stimulation was gentle enough that people couldn’t feel it, and some people were in a control group that had electrodes that never got turned on. Also, the study was double-blind: neither the volunteers nor the people who interviewed them were told who had what kind of stimulation. So it does seem that the effects were real.

via Scientists find switch for people to control their dreams – Vox.

tDCS clinical research – highlights: Cognitive Enhancement | Neurolectrics

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Neurolectrics (Starstim device) published a white paper (pdf) in October 2013 that nicely collects pretty much all we know to date about tDCS and cognitive enhancement. I was reminded of this while visiting their montages page on their new wiki. Quoted is from the Chi / Snyder 9 Dot study (pdf).

Brain stimulation enables the solution of an inherently difficult problem – Certain problems are inherently difficult for the normal human mind. Yet paradoxically they can be effortless for those with an unusual mind. We discovered that an atypical protocol for non-invasive brain stimulation enabled the solution of a problem that was previously unsolvable.The majority of studies over the last century find that no participants can solve the nine-dot problem – a fact we confirmed. But with 10 min of right lateralising tDCS, more than 40% of participants did so. Specifically, whereas no participant solved this extremely difficult problem before stimulation or with sham stimulation, 14 out of 33 participants did so with cathodal stimulation of the left anterior temporal lobe together with anodal stimulation of the right anterior temporal lobe. This finding suggests that our stimulation paradigm might be helpful for mitigating cognitive biases or dealing with a broader class of tasks that, although deceptively simple, are nonetheless extremely difficult due to our cognitive makeup

via NEWP302305-WhitePaperClinicalEvaluationCogEnh – NEWP302305-WhitePaperClinicalEvaluationCogEnh.pdf.

Electric “thinking cap” controls learning speed

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From Vanderbilt University Research News. This article got a lot of traction this week. I would be very curious to see the results of the same study with tDCS applied at the time the tests were being given (rather than before). I’ve heard this described as ‘online’ testing.
Interesting to see Mind Alive’s Oasis Pro device being used clinically.

Reinhart and Woodman set out to test several hypotheses: One, they wanted to establish that it is possible to control the brain’s electrophysiological response to mistakes, and two, that its effect could be intentionally regulated up or down depending on the direction of an electrical current applied to it. This bi-directionality had been observed before in animal studies, but not in humans. Additionally, the researchers set out to see how long the effect lasted and whether the results could be generalized to other tasks.

Beauty and the Brain | Spark with Nora Young | CBC Radio

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A little zap to the brain may improve the way you feel about a picture. Neurologist Zaira Cattaneo is the co-author of a new study called The world can look better: enhancing beauty experience with brain stimulation. For the experiment, Zaira and her fellow researchers stimulated the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to see if that would enhance the experience of beauty. The results? Listen to her full interview with Nora now!

via Beauty and the Brain | Spark with Nora Young | CBC Radio.
Or read/download the full paper: The world can look better: enhancing beauty experience with brain stimulation

tDCS clinical research – recent highlights: Pain

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The developers of Starstim, Neurolectrics, have a blog where they frequently discuss tDCS (and EEG). Here’s a snippet from their latest on tDCS & pain. Hit the link below to their full article.

Is transcranial current stimulation tCS, including direct current, tDCS, alternating current, tACS, or random noise stimulation tRNS effective? Now that is a good and difficult question! Let me try to review recent developments. In a recent post I provided an overview of tCS in Stroke. Here I do the same but for Pain. Please let me know if you think I am missing some important one! I have relied on Google Scholar and also PubMed to carry out the search, including the terms of tDCS, tACS, tRNS as well as Pain since 2012 and till Sep 2013.

via tDCS clinical research – recent highlights: Pain.

tDSC Papers of Note April 2013

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Regional personalized electrodes to select transcranial current stimulation target (pdf)
…with the present work we developed a procedure to properly shape the stimulating
electrode.
Regional-personalized-electrodes-to-select-transcranial-current-stimulation-target
(The familiar looking square electrodes were the reference electrodes.)
Tags: electrodes, tACS

The Sertraline vs Electrical Current Therapy for Treating Depression Clinical StudyResults From a Factorial, Randomized, Controlled Trial (pdf)
At the main end point, there was a significant difference in Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale scores when comparing the combined treatment group (sertraline/active tDCS) vs sertraline only, tDCS only, and placebo/sham tDCS… There were 7 episodes of treatment-emergent mania or hypomania, 5 occurring in the combined treatment group.
Tags: depression

Noninvasive transcranial direct current stimulation over the left prefrontal cortex facilitates cognitive flexibility in tool use (pdf)
The results support the hypothesis that certain tasks may benefit from a state of diminished cognitive control.
And a related news story discussing the same paper.
Brain hacking: Electrifying your creative side
Each person was shown pictures of everyday objects and asked to come up with a new uses for them.
The group which received the TDCS muting the left prefrontal cortex was better in coming up with unusual uses than the others — and did it faster.
Tags: creativity, Sharon Thompson-Schill, cathodal stimulation,

 Orchestrating neuronal networks: sustained after-effects of transcranial alternating current stimulation depend upon brain states (pdf)
Long lasting after-effects foster the role of tACS as a tool for non-invasive brain stimulation and demonstrate the potential for therapeutic application to reestablish the balance of altered brain oscillations.
Tags: tACS

Different Current Intensities of Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Do Not Differentially Modulate Motor Cortex Plasticity (pdf)
targeting M1 …10 minutes of anodal tDCS at 0.8, 1.0, and 1.2 mA
These results suggest that the aftereffect of anodal tDCS on facilitating cortical excitability is due to the modulation of synaptic mechanisms associated with long-term potentiation and is not influenced by different tDCS intensities.
Tags: M1, dosage

Transcranial direct-current stimulation increases extracellular dopamine levels in the rat striatum (pdf)
Following the application of cathodal, but not anodal, tDCS for 10 min, extracellular dopamine levels increased for more than 400 min in the striatum. There were no significant changes in extracellular serotonin levels.
Tags: dopamine

Spark of Genius: A new technology promises to supercharge your brain with electricity. Is it too good to be true?
Surprisingly good pop-sci overview of where we’re at with tDCS. Chock full of relevant links.

Using computational models in tDCS research and clinical trials (pdf)
Hypothesis: Appropriately applied computational models are pivotal for rational tDCS dose selection.
Tags: Comptational modeling, Marom Bikson,

Boosting brain functions: Improving executive functions with behavioral training, neurostimulation, and neurofeedback  (pdf)
This review provides a synopsis of two lines of research, investigating the enhancement of capabilities in executive functioning: a) computerized behavioral trainings, and b) approaches for direct neuromodulation (neurofeedback and transcranial electrostimulation).
Tags: cognitive enhancement

Focal Modulation of the Primary Motor Cortex in Fibromyalgia Using 4×1-Ring High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS): Immediate and Delayed Analgesic Effects of Cathodal and Anodal Stimulation (pdf)
We found that both active stimulation conditions led to significant reduction in overall perceived pain as compared to sham.
Tags: Fibromyalgia, HD-tDCS, Marom Bikson, pain

Articles of Note – March 2013

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(What happened to February?)
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of the visual cortex: a proof-of-concept study based on interictal electrophysiological abnormalities in migraine (pdf)
with anodal tDCS turned out to be beneficial in MoA (migraine without aura patients) migraine attack frequency, migraine days, attack duration and acute medication intake significantly decreased during the treatment period compared to pre-treatment baseline
Tags: Migraine, visual cortex,

The Mental Cost of Cognitive Enhancement (pdf)
Stimulation to the the posterior parietal cortex facilitated numerical learning, whereas automaticity for the learned material was impaired. In contrast, stimulation to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex impaired the learning process, whereas automaticity for the learned material was enhanced.
Wired Version
New Scientist Version
Tags: Roi Cohen Kadosh,

Keith Spalding’s Simple DIY TDCS circuit using CRDs
A DIY schematic for tDCS using CRDs for current regulation.
Tags: DIY, CRD

Noninvasive transcranial direct current stimulation over the left prefrontal cortex facilitates cognitive flexibility in tool use
…we hypothesized that cathodal (inhibitory) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) will facilitate performance in a flexible use generation task.
The results support the hypothesis that certain tasks may benefit from a state of diminished cognitive control.
Tags: inhibitory benefits,

When Anger Leads to Rumination
Induction of Relative Right Frontal Cortical Activity With Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Increases Anger-Related Rumination
…results suggest that anger associated with greater relative left frontal cortical activity predicts approach-oriented aggressive action, whereas anger associated with greater relative right frontal cortical activity predicts inhibited rumination.

Potential of transcranial direct current stimulation shown in fibromyalgia
Transcranial direct current stimulation delivered focally to the left primary motor cortex of patients with fibromyalgia significantly reduced perceived pain compared with sham stimulation in a proof-of-principle pilot trial.
Tags, fibromyalgia, pain

Catching Up – Articles of Note January 2013

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Neurobiological Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: A Review
The purpose of this systematic review is to summarize the current knowledge regarding the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the effects of tDCS.

Neuroenhancement of the aging brain: restoring skill acquisition in old subjects.
The main finding was that old participants experienced substantial improvements when training was applied concurrent with tDCS, with effects lasting for at least 24 hours.

Examining transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) as a treatment for hallucinations in schizophrenia.
Auditory verbal hallucinations were robustly reduced by tDCS relative to sham stimulation…

Modulation of training by single-session transcranial direct current stimulation to the intact motor cortex enhances motor skill acquisition of the paretic hand.
tDCS facilitated the acquisition of a new motor skill compared with sham stimulation…

Interactions between transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and pharmacological interventions in the Major Depressive Episode: Findings from a naturalistic study.
tDCS over the DLPFC acutely improved depressive symptoms…

Amelioration of cognitive control in depression by transcranial direct current stimulation.
Deficient cognitive control over emotional distraction is a central characteristic of major depressive disorder (MDD)
The present study demonstrates that anodal tDCS applied to the left dlPFC improves deficient cognitive control in MDD.

Transcranial direct current stimulation of the motor cortex in the treatment of chronic nonspecific low back pain: a randomized, double-blind exploratory study.
No significant effect was seen in the primary outcomes between active and sham stimulation

Comparing immediate transient tinnitus suppression using tACS and tDCS: a placebo-controlled study.
…bifrontal tDCS modulates tinnitus annoyance and tinnitus loudness, whereas individual alpha-modulated tACS does not yield a similar result.

Review of transcranial direct current stimulation in poststroke recovery.
In this review, we summarize characteristics of tDCS (method of stimulation, safety profile, and mechanism) and its application in the treatment of various stroke-related deficits, and we highlight future directions for tDCS in this capacity.

 

News from GoFlow! Good and Bad

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From the people at GoFlow…

Some sad news.

And some good news too.

As most have you have probably noticed, we haven’t made much progress on the GoFlow project in the last 6 months. We hit some obstacles, both in the business and in our personal lives, that kept us from making the progress we wanted.

We love tDCS and can’t wait to see it become available to everyone. Unfortunately, it looks like we won’t be the people making that happen. However, our friends at Foc.us have just launched and offer a great alternative.

Thank you all for your incredible support throughout the last year, we wish we could have successfully gotten GoFlow into your hands.

Some exciting news!

Our friends over at foc.us have just launched, and they have devices for sale!

We wanted to make sure to leave you with an alternative.

We’ve been in contact with the guys over a foc.us for quite awhile now. They’re some pretty awesome folks who are incredibly smart.

They just started selling their tDCS device last week, and have a limited quantity available. They have achieved much of what we were attempting to, and we’re really excited to see where they go.

Check out the Foc.us tDCS device!

via News from GoFlow! Good and Bad.

The Hidden Costs of Cognitive Enhancement | Wired Science

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And the link to the full paper. The Mental Cost of Cognitive Enhancement (HatTip ComradeSergey)

Those who had the parietal area involved in numerical cognition stimulated learned the new number system more quickly than those who got sham stimulation, the researchers report today in the Journal of Neuroscience. But at the end of the weeklong study their reaction times were slower when they had to put their newfound knowledge to use to solve a new task that they hadn’t seen during the training sessions. ”They had trouble accessing what they’d learned,” Cohen Kadosh said.

The volunteers who had the prefrontal area involved in learning and memory stimulated showed the opposite pattern. They were slower than the control group to learn the new numerical system, but they performed faster on the new test at the end of the experiment. The bottom line, says Cohen Kadosh, is that stimulating either brain region had both benefits and drawbacks. ”Just like with drugs, there seem to be side effects,” he said.

via The Hidden Costs of Cognitive Enhancement | Wired Science | Wired.com.
See Also: Brain-Boosting Technique Might Help Some Functions While Hurting Others

February 2013 tDCS Papers of Interest

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If there’s no link to a pdf, it means the full paper is behind a paywall. If you find a public link to the full paper, please send it along and I’ll update the post. Did I miss anything 😉
Bold: Paper title, linked to Abstract
(pdf): Direct pdf download where available
Italic: ‘Takeaway’ snippet from abstract.
(Bracketed): My thoughts FWIW
Tags:

Transcranial direct current stimulation increases resting state interhemispheric connectivity.
…the tDCS group showed increased DLPFC connectivity to the right hemisphere and decreased DLPFC connectivity to the brain regions around the stimulation site in the left hemisphere. (Lends more credence to the idea of increasing positive effects of tDCS by simultaneously damping down (cathodal) and ramping up (anodal) neuronal activity.)
Tags: theory, learning, enhancement

Transcranial direct current stimulation for treatment of refractory childhood focal epilepsy.
A single session of cathodal tDCS improves epileptic EEG abnormalities for 48 h and is well-tolerated in children.
Tags: epilepsy, children

Brain stimulation modulates the autonomic nervous system, rating of perceived exertion and performance during maximal exercise.
…indicating that the brain plays a crucial role in the exercise performance regulation.
Tags: sports medicine

Evolution of Premotor Cortical Excitability after Cathodal Inhibition of the Primary Motor Cortex: A Sham-Controlled Serial Navigated TMS Study (pdf)
Cathodal inhibition of M1 excitability leads to a compensatory increase of ipsilateral PMC (premotor cortical regions) excitability. (Cathodal tDCS used as a tool to facilitate an experiment)
Tags: theory,

Rethinking Clinical Trials of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Participant and Assessor Blinding Is Inadequate at Intensities of 2mA (pdf) (See also: A big hole in the control? Transcranial direct current stimulation blinding on trial)
Our results suggest that blinding in studies using tDCS at intensities of 2 mA is inadequate. Positive results from such studies should be interpreted with caution.
Tags: theory, sham, blinding,

The effects of cross-hemispheric dorsolateral prefrontal cortex transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on task switching
Task switching, defined as the ability to flexibly switch between tasks in the face of goal shifting, is a central mechanism in cognitive control. …Our findings confirm the notion that involvement of the PFC on task switching depends critically on laterality, implying the existence of different roles for the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere in task switching.
Tags: task switching, theory

The role of timing in the induction of neuromodulation in perceptual learning by transcranial electric stimulation
…tRNS (transcranial random noise stimulation) facilitated task performance only when it was applied during task execution, whereas anodal tDCS induced a larger facilitation if it was applied before task execution. (This study showed tDCS to be more effective when applied prior to training! (i.e. ‘offline’)
Tags: tRNS, offliine, online, training, enhancement, perceptual learning

Modulation of verbal fluency networks by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in Parkinson’s disease
…left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) tDCS increased performance on the phonemic fluency task
Tags: Parkinson’s, verbal fluency

Transcranial Electrical Currents to Probe EEG Brain Rhythms and Memory Consolidation during Sleep in Humans (2011) (pdf)
…results demonstrate the suitability of oscillating-tDCS as a tool to analyze functions of endogenous EEG rhythms and underlying endogenous electric fields as well as the interactions between EEG rhythms of different frequencies. (Way over my head at this point but trying to understand it, as Lisa Marshall is frequently mentioned in discussions around tDCS and memory. I’m also trying to build an understanding of EEG.)
Tags: memory consolidation, EEG, theory

(pdf) Random Noise Stimulation Improves Neuroplasticity in Perceptual Learning (2011)
Our results confirmed the efficacy of hf-tRNS over the visual cortex in improving behavioral performance and showed its superiority in comparison to other TES. (tRNS transcranial random noise stimulation, has been showing up more often in relation to studies focused on learning and cognition.)
Tags: tRNS, perceptual learning, neural plasticity,

Focal Modulation of the Primary Motor Cortex in Fibromyalgia Using 4×1-Ring High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS): Immediate and Delayed Analgesic Effects of Cathodal and Anodal Stimulation
4×1-ring HD-tDCS, a novel noninvasive brain stimulation technique capable of more focal and targeted stimulation, provides significant reduction in overall perceived pain in fibromyalgia patients..
Tags: HD-tDCS, Fibromyalgia, pain health

Transcranial direct current stimulation’s effect on novice versus experienced learning (2011)
TDCS was significantly more effective in enhancing test performance when applied in novice learners than in experienced learners.
Tags: learning, threat detection, anode F8,

Evaluation of sham transcranial direct current stimulation for randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials.
The tDCS sham condition investigated here may be suitable for placebo-controlled trials keeping subjects blind to treatment conditions. (The protocol for sham tDCS is necessarily evolving.)
Tags: sham,

Tremor Suppression by Rhythmic Transcranial Current Stimulation
With this technique we can achieve almost 50% average reduction in resting tremor amplitude and in so doing form the basis of a closed-loop tremor-suppression therapy that could be extended to other oscillopathies. (tACS transcranial alternating current)
Tags: Parkinsons, tremor, tACS

Is Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation Effective in Modulating Brain Oscillations? (pdf)
Therefore, the present study does not provide significant evidence for tACS reliably inducing direct modulations of brain oscillations that can influence performance in a visual task.
Tags: tACS, posterior parietal cortex, visual perception

Neuromodulation for Brain Disorders: Challenges and Opportunities (pdf)
This article reviews the state-of-the-art of neuromodulation for brain disorders and discusses the challenges and opportunities available for clinicians and researchers interested in advancing neuromodulation therapies. (Excellent overview of where we’re at with various forms of brain stimulation)
Tags: Neuromodulation, brain stimulation, tDCS, DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation), ICS (intracranial cortical stimulation), TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation)

Improved proper name recall in aging after electrical stimulation of the anterior temporal lobes (2011) (pdf)
The task was to look at pictures of famous faces or landmarks and verbally recall the associated proper name. Our results show a numerical improvement in face naming after left or right ATL stimulation, but a statistically significant effect only after left-lateralized stimulation.
Tags: name recall, anterior temporal lobes, aging,

Transcranial brain stimulation (not sure this link will work for you pdf)
This book reviews recent advances made in the field of brain stimulation techniques. Moreover NIBS techniques exert their effects on neuronal state through different mechanisms at cellular and functional level.
Tags: NIBS (non-invasive brains stimulation), research overview,

Naming facilitation induced by transcranial direct current stimulation. (2010)
…anodal tDCS of the left DLPFC improves naming performance, speeding up verbal reaction times after the end of the stimulation, whereas cathodal stimulation had no effect.
Tags: learning, left DLPFC,

Consolidation of Human Motor Cortical Neuroplasticity by D-Cycloserine (2004) (pdf)
While anodal tDCS enhances motor cortical excitability, cathodal tDCS diminishes it. Both effects seem to be NMDA receptor dependent. D-CYC selectively potentiated the duration of motor cortical excitability enhancements induced by anodal tDCS.(Again, way over my head, but NMDA receptors comes up frequently in the context of tDCS and neurotransmitters.)
Tags: NMDA receptors, D-Cycloserine, learning, enhancement

Interactions between transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and pharmacological interventions in the Major Depressive Episode: Findings from a naturalistic study. (See also: Electrical Brain Stimulation Plus Drug Fights Depression)
…To investigate the interactions between tDCS and drug therapy …tDCS over the DLPFC acutely improved depressive symptoms.
Tags: depression, Zoloft

Physiological and modeling evidence for focal transcranial electrical brain stimulation in humans: A basis for high-definition tDCS.
We provide direct evidence in humans that TES with a 4 × 1-Ring configuration can activate motor cortex and that current does not substantially spread outside the stimulation area.
Tags: HD-tDCS, electrodes, M1

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) Reduces Postsurgical Opioid Consumption in Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA).
…tDCS may be able to reduce post-TKA opioid requirements.
Tags: pain,

Modulating lexical and semantic processing by transcranial direct current stimulation.…(tDCS), which is applied over Wernicke’s area and its right homologue, to influence lexical decisions and semantic priming…
Results showed impaired lexical processing under right anodal/left cathodal stimulation in comparison with sham and left anodal/right cathodal stimulation.