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Short and long duration transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the human hand motor area

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Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to study effects of short and long duration transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the human motor cortex. In eight normal volunteers, motor evoked potentials (MEPs) induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) were recorded from the right first dorsal interosseous muscle, and tDCS was given with electrodes over the left primary motor cortex (M1) and the contralateral orbit. We performed two experiments: one for short duration tDCS (100 ms, 1, 3 or 5 mA) and the other for long duration tDCS (10 min, 1 mA). The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the onset of tDCS and TMS were 1–7 and 10–120 ms for the former experiment. In the latter experiment, TMS was given 0–20 min after the end of 10 min tDCS. We evaluated the effect of tDCS on the motor cortex by comparing MEPs conditioned by tDCS with control MEPs. Cathodal short duration tDCS significantly reduced the size of responses to motor cortical stimulation at SOAs of 1–7 ms when the intensity was equal to or greater than 3 mA. Anodal short duration tDCS significantly increased MEPs when the intensity was 3 mA, but the enhancement did not occur when using 5 mA conditioning stimulus. Moreover, both anodal and cathodal short duration tDCS decreased responses to TMS significantly at SOAs of 20–50 ms and enhanced them at an SOA of 90 ms. Long duration cathodal tDCS decreased MEPs at 0 and 5 min after the offset of tDCS and anodal long duration tDCS increased them at 1 and 15 min. We conclude that the effect at SOAs less than 10 ms is mainly caused by acute changes in resting membrane potential induced by tDCS. The effect at SOAs of 20–100 ms is considered to be a nonspecific effect of a startle-like response produced by activation of skin sensation at the scalp. The effect provoked by long duration tDCS may be short-term potentiation or depression like effects.

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Acknowledgments

Part of this work was supported by Research Project Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research No. 16500194, 18500236 from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan, The Research Grant (15B-2) for Nervous and Mental Disorders from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan, a grant from the Committee of the Study of Human Exposure to EMF, Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Post and Telecommunications, grants from Life Science foundation of Japan and the association of radio-industry and business (ARIB). We are also grateful to Professor Rothwell (Institute of Neurology) for his helpful comments and suggestions to the experiments and English revision. His visit to our laboratory and our visit to his laboratory were supported by Daiwa Foundation Awards.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Division of Neuroscience, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8655, Japan

    Toshiaki Furubayashi, Yasuo Terao, Noritoshi Arai, Shingo Okabe, Hitoshi Mochizuki, Ritsuko Hanajima, Masashi Hamada, Akihiro Yugeta, Satomi Inomata-Terada & Yoshikazu Ugawa

  2. Department of Neurology, Higashi-Saitama National Hospital, Saitama, Japan

    Hitoshi Mochizuki

  3. Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan

    Yoshikazu Ugawa

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  1. Toshiaki Furubayashi
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  2. Yasuo Terao
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  3. Noritoshi Arai
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  4. Shingo Okabe
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  5. Hitoshi Mochizuki
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  6. Ritsuko Hanajima
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  8. Akihiro Yugeta
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  9. Satomi Inomata-Terada
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  10. Yoshikazu Ugawa
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Correspondence to Toshiaki Furubayashi.

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Furubayashi, T., Terao, Y., Arai, N. et al. Short and long duration transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the human hand motor area. Exp Brain Res 185, 279–286 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-1149-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-1149-z

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