Effect of Anodal Versus Cathodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Stroke Rehabilitation

Abstract

A brief course of 2 types of tDCS stimulation is superior to sham stimulation in enhancing the effect of rehabilitation training to improve motor recovery after stroke.

Multiple sessions of transcranial direct current stimulation and upper extremity rehabilitation in stroke: A review and meta-analysis

“…Three studies did not describe the location of the strokes (Lindenberg et al, 2010;Wu et al, 2013;Viana et al, 2014). Four studies involved 65 (18%) participants with chronic stroke (Lindenberg et al, 2010;Bolognini et al, 2011;Nair et al, 2011;Viana et al, 2014), four studies involved 263 (71%) participants in the sub-acute stage (Kim et al, 2010;Hesse et al, 2011;Wu et al, 2013;Lee and Chun, 2014) and one study involved 40 (11%) people with acute stroke (Khedr et al, 2013). One hundred and forty-five (39%) participants had moderate UE impairments (Kim et al, 2010;Lindenberg et al, 2010;Bolognini et al, 2011;Nair et al, 2011;Lee and Chun, 2014;Viana et al, 2014) and 226 (61%) participants had severe UE impairments (Hesse et al, 2011;Khedr et al, 2013;Wu et al, 2013) at baseline based on the FMA or MRC Scale (shoulder) (Lum et al, 2002).…”

“…Eight studies used the FMA as an outcome measure of UE motor impairments (Kim et al, 2010;Lindenberg et al, 2010;Bolognini et al, 2011;Hesse et al, 2011;Nair et al, 2011;Wu et al, 2013;Lee and Chun, 2014;Viana et al, 2014) and one study used the Medical Research Council scale (Khedr et al, 2013). Only two studies explored the neurophysiological effects of tDCS, using measures of Resting and Active Motor Threshold (Khedr et al, 2013), motor evoked potential amplitude (Bolognini et al, 2011) and transcallosal inhibition to transcranial magnetic stimulation (Bolognini et al, 2011).…”

“…Only two studies explored the neurophysiological effects of tDCS, using measures of Resting and Active Motor Threshold (Khedr et al, 2013), motor evoked potential amplitude (Bolognini et al, 2011) and transcallosal inhibition to transcranial magnetic stimulation (Bolognini et al, 2011). Two studies employed functional MRI of brain activity as an outcome measure (Lindenberg et al, 2010;Nair et al, 2011).…”

“…Two studies employed functional MRI of brain activity as an outcome measure (Lindenberg et al, 2010;Nair et al, 2011). The Barthel Index or Modified Barthel Index and Motor Activity Log were utilised as measures of activities of daily living (Kim et al, 2010;Hesse et al, 2011;Bolognini et al, 2011;Khedr et al, 2013;Wu et al, 2013;Lee and Chun, 2014).…”

“…Follow-up assessments varied between seven days (Lindenberg et al, 2010); 2 weeks (Bolognini et al, 2011); 4 weeks (Wu et al, 2013;Bolognini et al, 2011); 3 months (Hesse et al, 2011;Khedr et al, 2013); and 6 months (Kim et al, 2010) post-intervention. Three studies reported additional assessments: at 1 day (Kim et al, 2010); 3 days (Lindenberg et al, 2010); and 6 days (Nair et al, 2011) after the intervention was ended as a follow-up assessment.…”