Irina Benedek

Neuroplasticity plays a major role during the recovery process of motor impairment, aphasia, dysphagia, and other symptoms after stroke. Neuromodulation technique, such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), has gained growing importance in the field of stroke rehabilitation, and provides means to modulate brain cortical activity in a specific brain region and induces plasticity or long-lasting facilitative effect of the network that has been stimulated. Using their after-effects, we can potentially facilitate motor, cognitive, and language recovery after stroke.

According to the available literature on the effect of the transcranial DC Stimulation for stroke recovery, this modality demonstrated conflicting results, but still has a potential to be used as an adjuvant therapy for stroke rehabilitation when appropriately combined with behavioral therapy. However, the further establishment of stimulation protocols maximizing the beneficial effect of interventions in terms of the optimal target population, delivery timing and stimulation parameters should further be pursued. Up to now, transcranial DC Stimulation for stroke rehabilitation is off label, and needs a large-scale phase III clinical trials, with eventually proof of effectiveness in a meta-analysis study. In this lecture, I will introduce studies on the application of transcranial DC Stimulation for neurorehabilitation