Abstract
Background
Studies have reported that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can modulate
human behaviors, symptoms, and neural activity; however, the neural effects during
stimulation are unknown. Most studies compared the effects of tDCS before and after
stimulation. The objective of our study was to measure the neurobiological effect
of a single tDCS dose during stimulation.
Methods
We conducted an online and offline protocol combining tDCS and magnetic resonance
spectroscopy (MRS) in 17 healthy participants. We applied anodal tDCS over the left
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and cathodal tDCS over the right DLPFC for
30 minutes, one of the most common montages used with tDCS. We collected MRS measurements
in the left DLPFC and left striatum during tDCS and an additional MRS measurement
in the left DLPFC immediately after the end of stimulation.
Results
During stimulation, active tDCS, as compared with sham tDCS, elevated prefrontal N-acetylaspartate and striatal glutamate + glutamine but did not induce significant
differences in prefrontal or striatal gamma-aminobutyric acid level. Immediately after
stimulation, active tDCS, as compared with sham tDCS, did not significantly induce
differences in glutamate + glutamine, N-acetylaspartate, or gamma-aminobutyric acid levels in the left DLPFC.
Conclusions
These observations indicate that tDCS over the DLPFC has fast excitatory effects,
acting on prefrontal and striatal transmissions, and these effects are short lived.
One may postulate that repeated sessions of tDCS might induce similar longer lasting
effects of elevated prefrontal N-acetylaspartate and striatal glutamate + glutamine levels, which may contribute to
its behavioral and clinical effects.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 19, 2015
Accepted:
November 13,
2015
Received in revised form:
November 11,
2015
Received:
April 10,
2015
Identification
Copyright
© Society of Biological Psychiatry, 2015.
ScienceDirect
Access this article on ScienceDirectLinked Article
- Erratum to: “Online Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Real Time on Human Prefrontal and Striatal Metabolites” by Hone-Blanchet et al. (Biol Psychiatry 2016; 80:432-438).Biological PsychiatryVol. 80Issue 11
- PreviewThe authors discovered a typographical error in the first author’s surname of a cited article. Specifically, for reference 35, the correct spelling of the author’s name is Clark, rather than Clarke. This error is present on page 436 in columns 1 and 2, and in reference 35 on page 438. The authors apologize for this error.
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