Clinical trial of an attention and driving ability by transcranial direct current stimulation(tDCS) for patients with higher brain dysfunction.

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24700575
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Rehabilitation science/Welfare engineering
• Research Institution: University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Japan
• Principal Investigator: KATO Noriaki 産業医科大学, 医学部, 助教 (50593365)
• Research Collaborator: NAKAYAMA Yoko
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 経頭蓋直流電気刺激 / 注意機能 / 自動車運転

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Objective of this study was to examine the effect of improving the attention and driving ability by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for patients with higher brain dysfunction due to stroke or Traumatic Brain Injury. Six subjects received anodal tDCS (20minutes; 2mA; in the left frontal lobe) during cognitive training for 7 days. Four subjects received sham tDCS (15 seconds; 0.2mA) during same cognitive training. TMT-B was significantly improved in anodal group compared with that of the sham group. SDMT was significantly worse in anodal group in contrast. There were some reports visual and verbal attention tasks were improved by anodal tDCS in the left prefrontal cortex, consistent with the results of TMT-B in this study. It was suggested that right frontal lobe inhibition by left anodal stimulation and right cathodal stimulation induced worse in SDMT scores. In this study, tDCS lacked in a result affecting　driving ability.

Free Research Field

リハビリテーション医学