Deans' stroke musings: Soterix Medical Announces Completion of Stroke-Aphasia Trial

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Soterix Medical Announces Completion of Stroke-Aphasia Trial

The article here: I dislike the proprietary part.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1014812

The NINDS page on aphasia here:
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/aphasia/aphasia.htm

Picture here:
http://photos.prnewswire.com/medias/switch.do?prefix=/appnb&page=/getStoryRemapDetails.do&prnid=20130115%252fNY42528&action=details

Abstract of trial here:
http://www.brainstimjrnl.com/article/S1935-861X%2812%2900183-0/abstract

Abstract

Background

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) induces long-lasting NMDA receptor-dependent cortical plasticity via persistent subthreshold polarization of neuronal membranes. Conventional bipolar tDCS is applied with two large (35 cm²) rectangular electrodes, resulting in directional modulation of neuronal excitability. Recently a newly designed 4 × 1 high-definition (HD) tDCS protocol was proposed for more focal stimulation according to the results of computational modeling. HD tDCS utilizes small disc electrodes deployed in 4 × 1 ring configuration whereby the physiological effects of the induced electric field are thought to be grossly constrained to the cortical area circumscribed by the ring.

Objective

We aim to compare the physiological effects of both tDCS electrode arrangements on motor cortex excitability.

Methods

tDCS was applied with 2 mA for 10 min. Fourteen healthy subjects participated, and motor cortex excitability was monitored by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) before and after tDCS.

Results

Excitability enhancement following anodal and a respective reduction after cathodal stimulation occurred in both, conventional and HD tDCS. However, the plastic changes showed a more delayed peak at 30 min and longer lasting after-effects for more than 2 h after HD tDCS for both polarities, as compared to conventional tDCS.

Conclusion

The results show that this new electrode arrangement is efficient for the induction of neuroplasticity in the primary motor cortex. The pattern of aftereffects might be compatible with the concept of GABA-mediated surround inhibition, which should be explored in future studies directly.