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Long-Term Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Does Not Improve Executive Function in Healthy Older Adults
- Source :
- Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, Vol 10 (2018), Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Frontiers Media SA, 2018.
-
Abstract
- Background: Executive function tends to decline as people age. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is assumed to have beneficial effects on various cognitive functions. Some prior investigations have shown that repeated sessions of tDCS enhance the executive function performance of healthy elderly people by mediating cognitive training gains. However, studies of the effect of long-term stimulation on executive function without cognitive training are absent. Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore whether the executive function of healthy older adults could be enhanced with long-term tDCS alone applied on the prefrontal cortex. Methods: Sixty-five cognitively normal older adults were enrolled and randomly assigned to two groups: an anodal tDCS group and a sham tDCS group. The participants in the two groups received anodal stimulation or sham stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal lobe, for 30 min per day for 10 consecutive days. Executive function was tested before stimulation, immediately after stimulation and 3 months after stimulation. Three core components of executive function were tested using a two-back task for updating, a flanker task for inhibition, and a switching task for shifting. Results: Across the three tasks, we failed to discover any differences between the anodal and sham stimulation. Moreover, we found no statistically significant stimulation effect in the follow-up session. Conclusion: Our study does not support the assumption that multiple sessions of tDCS that are independent of cognitive training have a beneficial effect on executive function in healthy older adults, presumably because the effect of the stimulation lies in its amplification of training gains. It indicates that combining traditional cognitive training methods with brain stimulation may be a better approach to improve older adults’ executive function.
- Subjects :
- medicine.medical_specialty
Aging
medicine.medical_treatment
follow-up effect
Cognitive Neuroscience
Stimulation
Audiology
050105 experimental psychology
lcsh:RC321-571
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
medicine
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Prefrontal cortex
lcsh:Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
older adults
Prefrontal lobe
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Transcranial direct-current stimulation
business.industry
05 social sciences
Cognition
Clinical Trial
Cognitive training
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
medicine.anatomical_structure
executive function
Brain stimulation
transcranial direct current stimulation
business
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Neuroscience
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 16634365
- Volume :
- 10
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....278e55bad73aeef7a3ff3fbdc874d2b7
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2018.00298