Cognitive Exercises with and without Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) -- Does Cognitive Exercises help to age with a healhy Brain?!
Currently we have a clinical trials with two arms of investigation (soon it will have 3-4 different arms): one group are receiving only cognitive exercises and the other group receive cogntivie exercises simultaneously with tACS applciation.
The protocol of the study is to the above treatments with the help of a tutor on a daily basis in 2 sessions of 30 min with half an hour of break, 5days/week, for 4 consecutive weeks. This treatment can be repeated every 4 months if the participants wish to.
People with mild cognitive impairment (some memory problems) or any type of dementia at early and moderate stages are enrolled. The details of the clinical trial can be found here.
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) is a tecnology (pictures below) that provides an alternating (a sinusoid) small amount of current (1.5 mA peak to peak) to the scalp. We use Gamma band 40 Hrz current as that is the wave that our brain generates when we focus on learning something. We apply its anode to left Doralateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) and the cathod on the contralateral supraorbital area. tACS is hypothesized leading to synaptic changes via spike-timing dpeendent plasticity mechanism.
Our results so far that has been presented in this paper indicates that both arms of the study show significant improvement after the intervention but the improvement among those who receive tACS in addition to cognitive exercises last better and longer. Thus, indeed the phrase "use it or lose it" applies to brain too but the key is in its mode of delivery of the exercises.
