scholarly journals Phase-specific manipulation of neural oscillatory activity by transcranial alternating current stimulation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Fiene ◽  
Bettina C. Schwab ◽  
Jonas Misselhorn ◽  
Christoph S. Herrmann ◽  
Till R. Schneider ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Phase Shift ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Alternating Current ◽  
Oscillatory Activity ◽  
Optimal Timing ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
Oscillatory Phase ◽  
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation ◽  
Onset Delays ◽  
Human Participants

AbstractBackgroundOscillatory phase has been proposed as a key parameter defining the spatiotemporal structure of neural activity. To enhance our understanding of brain rhythms and improve clinical outcomes in pathological conditions, phase-specific modulation of oscillations by transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) emerged as a promising approach. However, the effectiveness of tACS in humans is still critically debated.ObjectiveHere, we investigated the phase-specificity of tACS effects on visually evoked steady state responses (SSRs) in 24 healthy human participants of either sex.MethodsTo this end, we used an intermittent electrical stimulation protocol and assessed the influence of tACS on SSR amplitude in the interval immediately following tACS.ResultsWe observed that the phase shift between flicker and tACS modulates evoked SSR amplitudes. The tACS effect size was dependent on the strength of flicker-evoked oscillatory activity, with larger effects in participants showing weaker locking of neural responses to flicker phase. Neural sources of phase-specific effects were localized in the parieto-occipital cortex within flicker-entrained regions. Importantly, the optimal phase shift between flicker and tACS associated with strongest SSRs was correlated with cortical SSR onset delays over the visual cortex.ConclusionsOverall, our data provide electrophysiological evidence for phase-specific modulations of oscillatory activity by tACS in humans. As the optimal timing of tACS application was dependent on neural conduction times as measured by SSR onset delays, data suggest that the interaction between tACS effect and SSR was cortical in nature. These findings corroborate the physiological efficacy of tACS and highlight its potential for controlled modulations of brain signals.

scholarly journals Local network-level integration mediates effects of transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Fuscà ◽  
Philipp Ruhnau ◽  
Toralf Neuling ◽  
Nathan Weisz
Keyword(s):  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Alternating Current ◽  
Functional Network ◽  
Local Network ◽  
Oscillatory Activity ◽  
Alpha Power ◽  
State Dependency ◽  
External Stimulation ◽  
Posterior Cingulate ◽  
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation

AbstractTranscranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) has been proposed as a tool to draw causal inferences on the role of oscillatory activity in cognitive functioning and has the potential to induce long-term changes in cerebral networks. However, the mechanisms of action of tACS are not yet clear, though previous modeling works have suggested that variability may be mediated by local and network-level brain states. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record brain activity from 17 healthy participants as they kept their eyes open (EO) or closed (EC) while being stimulated either with sham, weak, or strong alpha-tACS using a montage commonly assumed to target occipital areas. We reconstructed the activity of sources in all stimulation conditions by means of beamforming. The analysis of resting-state data revealed an interaction of the external stimulation with the endogenous alpha power difference between EO and EC in the posterior cingulate. This region is remote from occipital cortex, which showed strongest EC vs. EO alpha modulation, thus suggesting state-dependency long-range effects of tACS. In a follow-up analysis of this online-tACS effect, we find evidence that this dependency effect could be mediated by functional network changes: connection strength from the precuneus, a region adjusting for a measure of network integration in the two states (EC vs. EO during no-tACS), was significantly correlated with the state-dependency effect in the posterior cingulate (during tACS). No analogous correlation could be found for alpha power modulations in occipital cortex. Altogether, this is the first strong evidence to illustrate how functional network architectures can shape tACS effects.

scholarly journals Modulating Brain Rhythms of Pain using Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS)? A Sham-controlled Study in Healthy Human Participants

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth S. May ◽  
Vanessa D. Hohn ◽  
Moritz M. Nickel ◽  
Laura Tiemann ◽  
Cristina Gil Ávila ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Pain ◽  
Alternating Current ◽  
The Body ◽  
Controlled Study ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
Autonomic Responses ◽  
Somatosensory Cortices ◽  
Pain Ratings ◽  
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation ◽  
Human Participants

AbstractPain protects the body. However, pain can also occur for longer periods without serving protective functions. Such chronic pain conditions are difficult to treat. Thus, a better understanding of the underlying neural mechanisms and new approaches for the treatment of pain are urgently needed. Here, we investigated a causal role of oscillatory brain activity for pain and explored the potential of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) as a new treatment approach for pain. To this end, we investigated whether tACS can modulate pain and pain-related autonomic activity in 29 healthy human participants using a tonic heat pain paradigm as an experimental model of chronic pain. In 6 recording sessions, participants received tACS over prefrontal or somatosensory cortices at alpha or gamma frequencies or sham tACS. During tACS, pain ratings and autonomic responses were collected. TACS did not modulate pain intensity, the stability of pain ratings or the translation of the noxious stimulus into pain. Likewise, tACS did not change autonomic responses. Bayesian statistics further indicated a lack of tACS effects in most conditions. The only exception was alpha tACS over somatosensory cortex where evidence for tACS effects was inconclusive. Taken together, the present study did not find significant tACS effects on tonic experimental pain in healthy human participants. However, considering the conceptual plausibility of using tACS to modulate pain and the urgent need for novel pain treatments, further tACS studies are warranted. Based on the present findings, such studies might apply refined stimulation protocols targeting alpha oscillations in somatosensory cortices.

scholarly journals Perception of Rhythmic Speech Is Modulated by Focal Bilateral Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedikt Zoefel ◽  
Isobella Allard ◽  
Megha Anil ◽  
Matthew H. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Alternating Current ◽  
Stream Segregation ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Oscillatory Activity ◽  
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation ◽  
Neural Entrainment ◽  
Actual Speech

Several recent studies have used transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to demonstrate a causal role of neural oscillatory activity in speech processing. In particular, it has been shown that the ability to understand speech in a multi-speaker scenario or background noise depends on the timing of speech presentation relative to simultaneously applied tACS. However, it is possible that tACS did not change actual speech perception but rather auditory stream segregation. In this study, we tested whether the phase relation between tACS and the rhythm of degraded words, presented in silence, modulates word report accuracy. We found strong evidence for a tACS-induced modulation of speech perception, but only if the stimulation was applied bilaterally using ring electrodes (not for unilateral left hemisphere stimulation with square electrodes). These results were only obtained when data were analyzed using a statistical approach that was identified as optimal in a previous simulation study. The effect was driven by a phasic disruption of word report scores. Our results suggest a causal role of neural entrainment for speech perception and emphasize the importance of optimizing stimulation protocols and statistical approaches for brain stimulation research.

scholarly journals Facilitated event-related power-modulations during transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) revealed by concurrent tACS-MEG

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian H. Kasten ◽  
Burkhard Maess ◽  
Christoph S. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Spatial Filtering ◽  
Alternating Current ◽  
Mental Rotation Task ◽  
Oscillatory Activity ◽  
Control Analysis ◽  
Alpha Band ◽  
Oscillatory Dynamics ◽  
Continuous Application ◽  
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation

AbstractNon-invasive approaches to modulate oscillatory activity in the brain receive growing popularity in the scientific community. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) has been shown to modulate neural oscillations in a frequency specific manner. Due to a massive stimulation artifact at the targeted frequency, only little is known about effects of tACS during stimulation. I.e. it remains unclear how the continuous application of tACS affects event-related oscillations during cognitive tasks. Depending on whether tACS merely affects pre‐ or post-stimulus oscillations or both, stimulation can alter patterns of event-related oscillatory dynamics in various directions or may not affect them at all. Thus, knowledge about these directions is crucial to plan, predict and understand outcomes of solely behavioral tACS experiments. Here, a recently proposed procedure to suppress tACS artifacts by projecting MEG data into source space using spatial filtering was utilized to recover event-related power modulations in the alpha band during a mental rotation task. MEG of twenty-five volunteers was continuously recorded. After 10 minutes of baseline measurement, they received either 20 minutes of tACS at individual alpha frequency or sham stimulation. Another 40 minutes of MEG were acquired thereafter. Data were projected into source space and carefully examined for residual artifacts. Results revealed strong facilitation of event-related power modulations in the alpha band during tACS application. Data provide first direct evidence, that tACS does not counteract top-down suppression of intrinsic oscillations, but rather enhances pre-existent power modulations within the range of the individual alpha (=stimulation) frequency.SignificanceTranscranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is increasingly used in cognitive neuroscience to study the causal role of brain oscillations and cognition. However, online effects of tACS so far largely remain a ‘black box’ due to an intense electromagnetic artifact encountered during stimulation. The current study is the first to employ a spatial filtering approach to recover and systematically study event-related oscillatory dynamics during tACS, which can potentially be altered in various directions. TACS facilitated pre-existing patterns of oscillatory dynamics during the employed mental rotation task, but does not counteract or overwrite them. In addition, control analysis and a measure to quantify tACS artifact suppression are provided that can enrich future studies investigating tACS online effects.

scholarly journals The hidden state-dependency of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian H. Kasten ◽  
Christoph S. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Markov Models ◽  
Alternating Current ◽  
Oscillatory Activity ◽  
Brain Disorders ◽  
State Dependency ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation ◽  
Brain States ◽  
Invasive Techniques ◽  
The Brain

AbstractNon-invasive techniques to electrically stimulate the brain such as transcranial direct and alternating current stimulation (tDCS/tACS) are increasingly used in human neuroscience and offer potential new avenues to treat brain disorders. However, their often weak and variable effects have also raised concerns in the scientific community. A possible factor influencing the efficacy of these methods is the dependence on brain-states. Here, we utilized Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to decompose concurrent tACS-magnetoencephalography data into transient brain-states with distinct spatial, spectral and connectivity profiles. We found that out of four spontaneous brain-states only one was susceptible to tACS. No or only marginal effects were found in the remaining states. TACS did not influence the time spent in each state. Our results suggest, that tACS effects may be mediated by a hidden, spontaneous state-dependency and provide novel insights to the changes in oscillatory activity underlying aftereffects of tACS.

Rhythmic Gamma Stimulation Affects Bistable Perception

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (7) ◽  
pp. 1298-1307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuranny Cabral-Calderin ◽  
Carsten Schmidt-Samoa ◽  
Melanie Wilke
Keyword(s):  
Gamma Oscillations ◽  
Physical Stimulus ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
Posterior Cortex ◽  
Alpha Oscillations ◽  
Bistable Perception ◽  
Motion Stimulus ◽  
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation ◽  
Human Participants

When our brain is confronted with ambiguous visual stimuli, perception spontaneously alternates between different possible interpretations although the physical stimulus remains the same. Both alpha (8–12 Hz) and gamma (>30 Hz) oscillations have been reported to correlate with such spontaneous perceptual reversals. However, whether these oscillations play a causal role in triggering perceptual switches remains unknown. To address this question, we applied transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) over the posterior cortex of healthy human participants to boost alpha and gamma oscillations. At the same time, participants were reporting their percepts of an ambiguous structure-from-motion stimulus. We found that tACS in the gamma band (60 Hz) increased the number of spontaneous perceptual reversals, whereas no significant effect was found for tACS in alpha (10 Hz) and higher gamma (80 Hz) frequencies. Our results suggest a mechanistic role of gamma but not alpha oscillations in the resolution of perceptual ambiguity.

scholarly journals Transcranial alternating current stimulation does not modulate corticospinal activity in humans

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Ibanez ◽  
Blanka Zicher ◽  
Kate Brown ◽  
Lorenzo Rocchi ◽  
Andrea Casolo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Cortex ◽  
Muscle Activity ◽  
Tibialis Anterior Muscle ◽  
Spectral Characteristics ◽  
Indirect Evidence ◽  
Alternating Current ◽  
Beta Activity ◽  
Beta Band ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (TACS) is commonly used to synchronise the output of a cortical area to other parts of the nervous system, but evidence for this based on brain recordings in humans is challenging. The brain transmits beta oscillations (~21Hz) to tonically contracted limb muscles linearly and through the fastest corticospinal pathways. Therefore, muscle activity may be used as a proxy measure for the level of beta entrainment in the corticospinal tract due to TACS over motor cortex. Here, we assessed if TACS is able to modulate the neural inputs to muscles, which would provide an indirect evidence for TACS-driven neural entrainment. In the first part of this study, we ran a series of simulations of motor neuron (MN) pools receiving inputs from corticospinal neurons with different levels of beta entrainment. Results indicated that MNs should be highly sensitive to changes in corticospinal beta activity. Then, we ran experiments on healthy human subjects (N=10) in which TACS (at 1mA) was delivered over the motor cortex at 21Hz (beta stimulation), or at 7Hz or 40Hz (control conditions) while the abductor digiti minimi (ADM) or the tibialis anterior muscle (TA) were tonically contracted. Muscle activity was measured using high-density electromyography, which allowed us to decompose the spiking activity of pools of motor units innervating the studied muscles. By analysing motor unit pool activity, we observed that none of the tested TACS conditions could consistently alter the spectral characteristics of the common neural inputs received by the muscles. These results suggest that 1mA-TACS over motor cortex given at frequencies in the beta band does not affect corticospinal beta entrainment.

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