Brain Injured Could Benefit from Electrical Brain Stimulation
Promising results have appeared in the treatment of traumatic brain injury in a study supported in part by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Rehabilitation Medicine Scientist Training Program. The study used noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain that produced an improvement in the ability to learn complex motor tasks. Healthy participants who received a mild electric current applied to the primary motor cortex became more skillful at a complex motor task than those who did not receive the stimulation. To find out whether the stimulation would improve performance over time, the researchers recruited 24 healthy volunteers and assigned half to active stimulation and half to imitated stimulation while performing the task of moving a cursor around a computer screen in a specific pattern using touch sensors. Over the course of five days both groups learned the task, but the stimulated group achieved a significantly higher level of skill. All participants made five return visits over three months to evaluate retention of the skill and the two groups had similar skill levels. “The persistence of a beneficial effect of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation at three months after the end of training may have promising implications for the design of motor learning protocols in healthy individuals and in patients undergoing neurorehabilitation,” the researchers concluded. The findings could hold promise for enhancing rehabilitation for people with traumatic brain injury, stroke and other conditions.
