Norwegian Patients Will Be Treated After A Stroke By Russian Methods

Heaven forbid we use anything from Russia, you wouldn't want communist pinko therapy to be used on your body. I wonder how different this is from tDCS?
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=22688&CultureCode=en
In Trondheim (Norway), clinical trials started for the brain microstimulation method for rehabilitation of patients who survived the stroke. Professor Yuri Kropotov, head of laboratory of action programming neurobiology (Institute of the Human Brain, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg), was assigned the project manager. Why? Because the method – its full name being the transcranial micropolarization method – is the development by Russian researchers, specialists of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Institute of the Human Brain, Russian Academy of Sciences.

“The transcranial micropolarization method was invented back in the 70-80s of the last century, but at that time it was not wide spread either in Russia, or abroad, says Yu.D. Kropotov. However, after insistent publications in scientific editions both by Russian and foreign authors, physicians became interested in this method.”

The stroke consequences are manifold: besides movement and speech disorders, patients’ perception suffers, particularly visual perception and attention. For example, there occurs a state when visual stimuli on the right side or, more often, on the left side are not perceived (the side depends on the brain damage location). A person as if does not pay attention to a visual image, he/she does not perceive it. “The disorders are as a rule observed in the right parietal region of brain and are connected with the channel, through which goes visual information responding to the question where the object is located, explains Yu.D. Kropotov. Certain information simply does not get into the brain, and the person does not see the object.”

To localize such disorders, activity of various brain zones should be measured and locations of decreased activity should be identified. Any action by a person, even the simplest one, requires participation of various brain structures. For example, crossing the street at the green light activates primary regions of visual cortex, connected with object’s feature extraction (such as color and orientation), then temporal cortex regions are involved, connected with recognition of images and attaching sense to them, then signals are transmitted to the prefrontal cortex regions connected with movement initiation. All these processes are reflected in the so-called cerebral evoked potentials - electric oscillation of a definite form. Evoked potentials reflect information processing processes, to evoke them, certain tests are used. For example, in such a test the person under consideration is presented two kinds of stimuli: the person is to react to one of them by, for example, pressing a button, and he/she should not react to others.

After the brain zones of decreased activity have been determined, they should be affected in a proper way. To this end, these zone are stimulated transcranially (via the cranium) with the help of microcurrent fed through skin electrodes. Electrodes are applied to respective regions of head, the electrodes being under direct voltage, through which microcurrent goes (current strength being up to 500 microamperes). Microcurrent causes changes to membrane potential of brain cells and normalizes their work. The method got approval in Russia – more than a thousand patients have already received such course of rehabilitation. Norwegian specialists on rehabilitation medicine have now got the Ethical commission’s permission for carrying out the investigation. “A small group of patients who survived a stroke has already been selected, and we are waiting for the first results in four months, says Yu.D. Kropotov. In the course of exposure, the researchers will watch over the patient’s state in the real time mode.”