Objectives: Previous studies have shown that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) led to an improvement of various cognitive functions in patients with Alzheimer dementia, early affected by short-term memory deficits. Since this approach has not been evaluated in the context of vascular dementia, which rather affects the velocity of cognitive responses, we aimed at improving these functions by applying repetitive sessions of anodal tDCS.
Methods: Four 20-minute sessions of 2mA anodal or sham at-home tDCS were applied to the left DLPFC in a single-blinded randomised study of 21 patients with mild vascular dementia, with parallel-group design. The effect of tDCS on cognitive testing was assessed up to two weeks beyond the stimulation time.
Results: A similar clinically meaningful improvement of various cognitive and behavioral dysfunction characteristics could be observed following either active or sham tDCS, whereas visual recall, and reaction times in the n-back task as well as in the go/no-go test improved only in the active tDCS group.
Conclusions: In patients with mild vascular dementia, anodal tDCS of the left DLPFC is able to produce additional effects to cognitive training on visual short-term memory, verbal working memory, and executive control.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jns.2016.07.065 | DOI Listing |
Ann Clin Transl Neurol
January 2025
Department of Non-Communicable Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT, UK.
Objective: Evidence for an association between psoriasis and dementia is limited and conflicting. We aimed to investigate the association using large and representative population-based data and describe risk by dementia subtype and over time.
Methods: We compared dementia risk between people with and without psoriasis using an age-, sex- and primary care practice-matched cohort of adults aged ≥40 years from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink Aurum in England (1997-2021) linked to hospital admissions data, analysed with stratified Cox regression.
Nat Rev Neurosci
January 2025
UK Dementia Research Institute, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is a vascular disorder that increases the risk of stroke and dementia and is diagnosed through brain MRI. Current primary prevention and secondary treatment of SVD are focused on lifestyle interventions and vascular risk factor control, including blood pressure reduction. However, these interventions have limited effects, a proportion of individuals with sporadic SVD do not have hypertension, and SVD shows strong familial and genetic underpinnings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Chim Acta
December 2024
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Genomics Research Centre, Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health, School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health, 60 Musk Ave., Kelvin Grove, Queensland 4059, Australia. Electronic address:
Background And Aims: Cerebral small vessel diseases (CSVDs) are a set of conditions that affect the small blood vessels in the brain and can cause severe neurological pathologies such as stroke and vascular dementia. The most common monogenic CSVD is cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) which is caused by mutations in NOTCH3. However, only 15-20% of CADASIL cases referred for genetic testing have pathogenic mutations in NOTCH3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimers Dement
December 2024
Laboratory of FMRI Technology (LOFT), Mark & Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Introduction: Diffusion tensor image analysis along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS) index was proposed for assessing glymphatic clearance function. This study evaluated DTI-ALPS as a biomarker for cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) related vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID).
Methods: Four independent cohorts were examined.
Alzheimers Dement
December 2024
Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, UK.
Introduction: White matter hyperintensity volumes (WMHVs) are disproportionally prevalent in individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD), potentially reflecting neurovascular injury. We quantify the association between AD polygenic risk score (AD-PRS) and WMHV, exploring single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are proximal to genes overexpressed in cerebrovascular cell species.
Methods: In a UK-Biobank sub-sample (mean age = 64, range = 45-81 years), we associate WMHV with (1) AD-PRS estimated via SNPs across the genome (minus apolipoprotein E [APOE] locus) and (2) AD-PRS estimated with SNPs proximal to specific genes that are overexpressed in cerebrovascular cell species.
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