No significant improvement in cognition with active vs. sham transcranial stimulation

Key takeaways:

• Researchers conducted a literature review on using transcranial direct current stimulation to treat mild cognitive impairment.
• Performance was better with active vs. sham, but the results were not significant.

Researchers reported no significant difference in cognitive performance between active and sham transcranial direct current stimulation for mild cognitive impairment, per a poster at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

“Transcranial direct current stimulation is a noninvasive intervention strategy for people with [mild cognitive impairment] to delay or prevent their progression to dementia,” Sandhya G, a PhD student at the Center for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science, and colleagues wrote.

Researchers sought to review the extant body of literature on using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to treat mild cognitive impairment and to assess the effect of the procedure compared with sham via meta-analysis.

Their search for randomized and sham-controlled clinical trials yielded 221 results from PubMed and 686 results from Google Scholar as of November 2022. After screening, eight records were suitable for inclusion. Cognitive tests within the studies included Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), TMT Trail Making Test) A and B, Digit Span Test (DST) forward and backward, and Logical Memory Test (LMT).

Researchers utilized a random effects model for analysis and I² to evaluate heterogeneity.

Results showed those who received active tDCS performed better in tests for global cognition, MoCA and MMSE compared with those who underwent sham, but the differences were not statistically significant. According to researchers, subgroup and sensitivity analyses of MoCA scores yielded similar insignificant results, as did analyses for the remaining cognitive tests.

“The study identified no significant improvement in cognitive performance with active tDCS in comparison with sham tDCS,” G and colleagues wrote.