Boosting the therapeutic benefits of prism adaptation using tDCS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Boosting the therapeutic benefit of prism adaptation by combining it with TDCS
IRAS ID
86880
Contact name
Jacinta O'Shea
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Research summary
Summary of Results
This study aimed to test a potential new approach to treating “spatial neglect”, symptoms that can develop after stroke, in which people lose awareness of left space. Previous research showed that a simple pointing exercise while wearing prism glasses could improve sufferers’ ability to attend to left space. However, the effect is short-lasting. This study aimed to test whether stimulating patients’ brains while they do the training exercise could lead to a longer lasting improvement. The brain stimulation is non-invasive and painless. Six stroke survivors completed the study. They came to the laboratory at the University of Oxford for a number of visits. They came twice to do the pointing training daily for five consecutive days while having brain stimulation at the same time. In one of the weeks they had real stimulation; in the other week they had fake stimulation. In the days and weeks before and after each training week, their neglect symptoms were measured. They also had brain scans before and after the training weeks. The goal was to test whether their symptoms and their brains were changed by the training and if the improvement was greater with real compared to fake brain stimulation. All participants benefited from both weeks of training: their symptoms were improved after compared to before. However, it was not possible to get a clear answer as to whether the size of improvement was greater for real versus fake stimulation because the number of participants was too small. A sample of 40 participants was needed but only a sample of 6 participants was recruited. The conclusion is that the pointing training with prisms helped improve people's symptoms. This was notable as they had been suffering with stable symptoms for many years and each week of training improved those symptoms. It remains to be tested in future with a larger number of participants whether the addition of brain stimulation can make this improvement even greater.
REC name
South Central - Oxford A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
12/SC/0556
Date of REC Opinion
13 Dec 2012
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion