Abstract
In the past few years, there has been a rapid increase in the application of non-invasive brain stimulation to study brain-behavior relations in an effort to potentially increase the effectiveness of neuro-rehabilitation. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), an emerging technique of non-invasive brain stimulation, has shown to produce beneficial neural effects in consequence with improvements in motor behavior. tDCS has gained popularity as it is economical, simple to use, portable, and increases corticospinal excitability without producing any serious side effects. As tDCS has been increasingly investigated as an effective tool for various disorders, numerous improvements, and developments have been proposed with respect to this technique. tDCS has been widely used to identify the functional relevance of particular brain regions in motor skill learning and also to facilitate activity in specific cortical areas involved in motor learning, in turn improving motor function. Understanding the interaction between tDCS and motor learning can lead to important implications for developing various rehabilitation approaches. This paper provides a concise overview of tDCS as a neuromodulatory technique and its interaction with motor learning. The paper further briefly goes through the application of this priming technique in the stroke population.
Highlights
Non-invasive brain stimulation involves modulation of the central nervous system by electrically activating neurons in the brain (Dymond et al, 1975)
DIRECTIONS Despite the above limitations, the following can be concluded about transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS):
There is accumulating evidence to suggest that tDCS is effective in modulating cortical excitability in most cases
Summary
Non-invasive brain stimulation involves modulation of the central nervous system by electrically activating neurons in the brain (Dymond et al, 1975). This imbalance in between-hemisphere corticospinal excitability is suggested to be maladaptive and a marker of poor tDCS – motor learning and stroke review functional recovery (Rossini et al, 2003; Ward et al, 2003; Serrien et al, 2004; Duque et al, 2007; Madhavan and Stinear, 2010) Further evidence for this can be found in training studies where post-training improvement in upper limb and lower limb motor function is associated with a decrease in the excitability of the non-lesioned M1 or increase in the excitability of the lesioned M1 (Muellbacher et al, 2002; Lin et al, 2008; Yen et al, 2008).
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