Transcranial direct current stimulation leads to faster acquisition of motor skills, but effects are not maintained at retention

Abstract

Practice is required to improve one’s shooting technique in basketball or to play a musical instrument well. Learning these motor skills may be further enhanced by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). We aimed to investigate whether tDCS leads to faster attainment of a motor skill, and to confirm prior work showing it improves skill acquisition and retention performance. Fifty-two participants were tested; half received tDCS with the anode on primary motor cortex and cathode on the contralateral forehead while concurrently practicing a sequential visuomotor isometric pinch force task on Day 1, while the other half received sham tDCS during practice. On Day 2, retention of the skill was tested. Results from a Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that participants in the anodal group attained a pre-defined target level of skill faster than participants in the sham group (χ2 = 9.117, p = 0.003). Results from a nonparametric rank-based regression analysis showed that the rate of improvement was greater in the anodal versus sham group during skill acquisition (F(1,249) = 5.90, p = 0.016), but there was no main effect of group or time. There was no main effect of group or time, or group by time interaction when comparing performance at the end of acquisition to retention. These findings suggest anodal tDCS improves performance more quickly during skill acquisition but does not have additional benefits on motor learning after a period of rest.

Transcranial direct current stimulation in physical therapy treatment for adults after stroke: A systematic review

“…The studies included ischemic and hemorrhagic post-stroke patients and in different phases of recovery from the moment of the stroke, so that the results could be conditioned since it is estimated that an early intervention can be more favorable (Garrido M et al, 2023;Zhao, Liu, Sun, & Li, 2022), and that TDCS can promote faster acquisition of motor skills (Kunaratnam et al, 2022). In addition, it may be interesting to individualize the treatment dose to the characteristics of each patient (Beaulieu, Blanchette, Mercier, Bernard-Larocque, & Milot, 2019), and perform the intervention at home (Prathum et al, 2022), this is one of the advantages of the technique.…”

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Chronic Stroke: Is Neuroimaging the Answer to the Next Leap Forward?

“…Subsequently, in 2021, the Cochrane Review upgraded its findings slightly to conclude that tDCS moderately enhanced outcomes in stroke survivors’ activities of daily living [ 31 ]. The updated review indicates the emergence of new evidence regarding use of tDCS in long-term stroke survivors, and in particular, improvements in selective attention [ 65 ], visuospatial working memory [ 65 ], planning [ 65 ], language abilities [ 66 , 67 , 68 ], faster acquisition of motor skills [ 68 ], and gait [ 69 ]. Nevertheless, the authors speculated that the inconsistency of tDCS still present in many studies stemmed from the lack of standardization across studies in dosage, voltage, current, stroke volume, and stimulation parameters.…”