Electrical Stimulation for Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the most common type of Dementia whose symptomology consists of memory loss, poor judgment, and difficulty in completing familiar tasks. In AD, the neurons are subjugated to cell death, destroying the connectivity of various brain regions. The degeneration of the brain is global, affecting various tracts; the most prominent region of interest is accessible through noninvasive stimulation is the forceps minor. The forceps minor is a commissural fiber connecting homologous regions in the frontal lobe and is highly associated with decision-making, language skills, and emotional regulation. U send packets of electrical stimuli down these tracts to alleviate AD symptoms.
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Our 12-week amplitude-modulated transcranial pulsed current stimulation (am-tPCS) intervention led to significant changes in brain connectivity patterns in Alzheimer's disease patients. The integrated local correlation (LCOR) analysis, which measures local synchronization of brain activity, revealed increased local synchronization by over 200% in key regions like the frontal pole, hippocampus, and temporal areas. The interhemispheric coherence (IHC) results, reflecting coordination between the left and right hemispheres, showed enhanced coordination between the left and right hemispheres by up to 410% in structures critical for memory and emotional regulation. Finally, the multivariate correlation (MCOR) findings, which detect complex patterns of connectivity across the brain, demonstrated the emergence of new connections within frontal, temporal, and subcortical networks, with voxel increases ranging from 115% to 5400%. Collectively, these changes suggest that am-tPCS may strengthen residual neural pathways and promote beneficial neuroplastic responses in brain areas affected by Alzheimer's disease pathology. The results provide promising evidence for the potential of am-tPCS to improve brain function in Alzheimer's patients.
The 12-week amplitude-modulated transcranial pulsed current stimulation (am-tPCS) intervention led to notable changes in functional connectivity and ROI-ROI (region of interest) connectivity in Alzheimer's disease patients. Post-stimulation data revealed a striking shift in brain connectivity patterns, with distinct alterations in the threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE) values for 4 out of 6 clusters (1/1, 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3), reflecting an impact on the network organization within these clusters. Furthermore, 9 connections exhibited substantial modifications in strength post-stimulation, involving key brain regions such as the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACC), insular cortex (AInsula), supramarginal gyrus (SMG), rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RPFC), and lateral parietal cortex (LP). These changes were supported by significantly lower p-values, with the strongest connections showing p-values as low as 0.000052 and 0.000065, and FDR-corrected p-values post-stimulation, underscoring the heightened statistical significance of the results. The observed improvements in functional connectivity between specific brain regions suggest that am-tPCS may enhance the coordination of neural processes and information transfer in networks critical for cognitive and emotional functioning in Alzheimer's disease patients.
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