Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) Can Modulate EEG Complexity of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Jiannan Kang,Manuel F. Casanova,Xiaoli Li,Junxia Han,Zhen Tong,Erjuan Cai,Gaoxiang Ouyang,Xin Li,Estate M. Sokhadze

doi:10.3389/fnins.2018.00201

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorder which affects the developmental trajectory in several behavioral domains, including impairments of social communication, cognitive and language abilities. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, and it was used for modulating the brain disorders. In this paper, we enrolled 13 ASD children (11 males and 2 females; mean ± SD age: 6.5 ± 1.7 years) to participate in our trial. Each patient received 10 treatments over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) once every 2 days. Also, we enrolled 13 ASD children (11 males and 2 females; mean ± SD age: 6.3 ± 1.7 years) waiting to receive therapy as controls. A maximum entropy ratio (MER) method was adapted to measure the change of complexity of EEG series. It was found that the MER value significantly increased after tDCS. This study suggests that tDCS may be a helpful tool for the rehabilitation of children with ASD.

Highlights

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by an impairment in social communication, restricted interests and stereotypical behaviors (Rapin, 1997)
The results showed that the normalized maximum entropy normalized maximum entropy ratio (NMER) value is 0.1100 before Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and increased to 0.2275 after one session tDCS treatment and t test statistical method was used (p = 0.0259 < 0.05)
We aimed to investigate whether tDCS had some effects on the EEG complexity of autistic children using the maximum entropy ratio (MER) method

Summary

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by an impairment in social communication, restricted interests and stereotypical behaviors (Rapin, 1997). The causes and pathologic mechanisms of autism are still unclear (Trottier et al, 1999). Genetic studies have revealed that several single-gene disorders and rare copy number variants appear to be strongly associated with ASD; genetic syndromes, mutations, and single-gene etiologies account for only 10 to 20% of ASD cases, and in many cases individuals with these genetic syndromes do not have an ASD diagnosis (Abrahams and Geschwind, 2008). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have demonstrated functional under-connectivity in ASD (Just et al, 2007) and reported abnormalities in individuals with ASD when performing tasks that include working memory and face recognition (Pierce et al, 2001; Koshino et al, 2008)

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Conclusion