Head models of healthy and depressed adults for simulating the electric fields of non-invasive electric brain stimulation

Abstract

During the past decade, it became clear that the electric field elicited by non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) are substantially influenced by variations in individual head and brain anatomy. In addition to structural variations in the healthy, several psychiatric disorders are characterized by anatomical alterations that are likely to further constrain the intracerebral effects of NIBS. Here, we present high-resolution realistic head models derived from structural magnetic resonance imaging data of 19 healthy adults and 19 patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD). By using a freely available software package for modelling the electric fields induced by different NIBS protocols, we show that our head models are well-suited for assessing inter-individual and between-group variability in the magnitude and focality of tDCS-induced electric fields for two protocols targeting the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.