Different paradigms of transcranial electrical stimulation improve motor function impairment and striatum tissue injuries in the collagenase-induced intracerebral hemorrhage rat model

Abstract

Background In the horizon of therapeutic restrictions in intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), recently, non-invasive transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) has achieved considerable prosperities. Translational studies have postulated that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and the other types of tES remain potentially a novel therapeutic option to reverse or stabilize cognitive and motor impairments. Objective The aim of this study was to comparatively evaluate the effects of the four main paradigms of tES, including tDCS, transcranial alternating (tACS), pulsed (tPCS), and random noise (tRNS) stimulations on collagenase-induced sensorimotor impairments and striatum tissue damage in male rats. Methods To induce ICH, 0.5 μl of collagenase was injected into the right striatum of male Sprague Dawley rats. One day after surgery, tES, was applied to the animals for seven consecutive days. Motor functions were appraised by neurological deficit score, rotarod, and wire hanging tests on the day before surgery and postoperative days 3, 7, and 14. After behavioral tests, brain tissue was prepared appropriately to perform the stereological evaluations. Results The results indicated that the application of the four tES paradigms (tDCS, tACS, tRNS, and tPCS) significantly reversed motor disorders in collagenase-induced ICH groups. Further, the motor function improvement of tACS and tRNS receiving rats in wire-hanging and rotarod tests were higher than the other two tES receiving groups. Structural changes and stereological assessments also confirmed the results of behavioral functions. Conclusion Our findings suggest that in addition to tDCS application in the treatment of ICH, other tES paradigms, especially tACS and tRNS may be considered as add-on therapeutic strategies in stroke.

Transcranial pulsed current stimulation: A scoping review of the current literature on scope, nature, underlying mechanisms, and gaps

“…These studies explored the neurophysiological mechanisms of tPCS. The findings of a study revealed that tPCS, similar to other tES techniques, significantly influenced motor disorders in collagenase‐induced intracerebral hemorrhage (Heidarzadegan et al., 2022). Another study suggested that tPCS can enhance the locomotor function of stroke rats by regulating the expression of microtubule‐associated protein around the ischemic penumbra (Wang et al., 2021).…”

“…The literature search identified 500 articles, including 498 studies from online databases and two studies (Alon et al., 2011; Heidarzadegan et al., 2022) from searching in the cited references of included studies. In the second stage, 204 articles remained after removing duplicates from the initial search result.…”

“…All these studies recruited both male and female participants, except one, which only recruited females with fibromyalgia (Castro et al., 2021). Furthermore, the sample size in the included animal studies ranged from 35 to 56 male rats aged 8 to 12 weeks (Heidarzadegan et al., 2022; Ma et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2021).…”

“…Also, another study that investigated the effects of different stimulation times on the EEG power band and coherency employed 30 min tPCS (Vasquez et al., 2016). Additionally, in animal studies, the amplitude of direct cellular stimulation has typically been set at 0.2 mA for 20 min at frequencies of both 10 Hz (Wang et al., 2021) and 30 Hz (Heidarzadegan et al., 2022). However, in another animal study, a 2 Hz frequency of tPCS was employed with amplitudes ranging from 0.1 to 0.35 mA, administered for 2 s and 5 min (Ma et al., 2019).…”

“…Six studies positioned electrodes on the frontal lobe (F3, F4, F8, and Fp2) (Barra et al., 2022; Mansouri et al., 2019; Paneri et al., 2016; Shen et al., 2022; Wu et al., 2022a, 2022b), two studies located electrodes on the occipital lobe (P3, P4) (Saito et al., 2022; Singh et al., 2019), and a study reported on Cz (Liu et al., 2021) based on cephalic montage. Additionally, two human studies have employed extrahepatic montages by active electrodes on the parietal (Alon et al., 2012; Sours et al., 2014) and occipital lobe (Singh et al., 2019), and two animal studies applied extracephalic montages on the right frontal (Heidarzadegan et al., 2022) and M1 (Wang et al., 2021). However, other studies used cephalic montage on right‐primary somatosensory (S1) (Ma et al., 2019).…”