Deans' stroke musings: Neurostimulation for cognitive rehabilitation in stroke (NeuroCog): study protocol for a randomized controlled 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, October 20, 2015

Neurostimulation for cognitive rehabilitation in stroke (NeuroCog): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

We may finally be getting some progress into the cognitive issues. I wonder how/why this team decided on this problem. You'll have to see if your doctor is following this study and making changes to your cognitive stroke protocol.
http://www.trialsjournal.com/content/16/1/435

Suellen Marinho Andrade¹^*, Bernardino Fernández-Calvo¹, Paulo Sérgio Boggio², Eliane Araújo de Oliveira³, Lilze Franklim Gomes⁴, José Eudes Gomes Pinheiro Júnior⁵, Rafaela Martins Rodrigues⁴, Natália Leandro de Almeida⁴, Gioconda Marla de Siqueira Moreira⁴ and Nelson Torro Alves¹

* Corresponding author: Suellen M Andrade suellenandrade@gmail.com

Methods

Sixty patients who suffer from chronic strokes will be randomized into one of four groups: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, cingulo–opercular network, motor primary cortex and sham stimulation.
Each group will receive transcranial direct current stimulation at an intensity of 2 mA for 20 minutes daily for 10 consecutive days.
Patients will be assessed with a Dysexecutive Questionnaire, Semantic Fluency Test, categorical verbal fluency and Go–no go tests, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Rey Auditory–Verbal Learning Test, Letter Comparison and Pattern Comparison Tasks at baseline and after their tenth stimulation session.
Those who achieve clinical improvement with neurostimulation will be invited to receive treatment for 12 months as part of a follow–up study.

Author Affiliations

¹ Cognitive Neuroscience and Behavior Program, Department of Psychology, Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, Brazil
² Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory and Developmental Disorders Program, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
³ Center for Research in Human Movement Sciences, Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil
⁴ Perception, Neurosciences and Behavior Laboratory, Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil
⁵ Department of Sciences of Religions, NOUS Group, Federal University of Paraíbas, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil

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Trials 2015, 16:435 doi:10.1186/s13063-015-0945-1
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.trialsjournal.com/content/16/1/435

Received:	26 January 2015
Accepted:	7 September 2015
Published:	29 September 2015

© 2015 Andrade et al.

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Abstract

Background

Stroke patients may present severe cognitive impairments, primarily related to executive functions. Transcranial direct current stimulation has shown promising results, with neuromodulatory and neuroplastic effects. This study is a double-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial aiming to compare the long-term effects of stimulation in two different cognitive regions after a stroke.

Methods/Design

Sixty patients who suffer from chronic strokes will be randomized into one of four groups: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, cingulo-opercular network, motor primary cortex and sham stimulation. Each group will receive transcranial direct current stimulation at an intensity of 2 mA for 20 minutes daily for 10 consecutive days. Patients will be assessed with a Dysexecutive Questionnaire, Semantic Fluency Test, categorical verbal fluency and Go-no go tests, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test, Letter Comparison and Pattern Comparison Tasks at baseline and after their tenth stimulation session. Those who achieve clinical improvement with neurostimulation will be invited to receive treatment for 12 months as part of a follow-up study.

Discussion

Long-term stimulation could be analyzed in regard to possible adaptive changes on plasticity after structural brain damage and if these changes are different in terms of clinical improvement when applied to two important cognitive centers.