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 PMID:32743758  

Effects of bifrontal transcranial direct current stimulation on brain glutamate levels and resting state connectivity: multimodal MRI data for the cathodal stimulation site.

Eva Mezger | Boris-Stephan Rauchmann | Andre R Brunoni | Lucia Bulubas | Axel Thielscher | Jana Werle | Matin Mortazavi | Temmuz Karali | Sophia Stöcklein | Birgit Ertl-Wagner | Stephan Goerigk | Frank Padberg | Daniel Keeser
European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience | 2021

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions is currently proposed as therapeutic intervention for major depression and other psychiatric disorders. The in-depth mechanistic understanding of this bipolar and non-focal stimulation technique is still incomplete. In a pilot study, we investigated the effects of bifrontal stimulation on brain metabolite levels and resting state connectivity under the cathode using multiparametric MRI techniques and computational tDCS modeling. Within a double-blind cross-over design, 20 subjects (12 women, 23.7 ± 2 years) were randomized to active tDCS with standard bifrontal montage with the anode over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the cathode over the right DLPFC. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) was acquired before, during, and after prefrontal tDCS to quantify glutamate (Glu), Glu + glutamine (Glx) and gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentration in these areas. Resting-state functional connectivity MRI (rsfcMRI) was acquired before and after the stimulation. The individual distribution of tDCS induced electric fields (efields) within the MRS voxel was computationally modelled using SimNIBS 2.0. There were no significant changes of Glu, Glx and GABA levels across conditions but marked differences in the course of Glu levels between female and male participants were observed. Further investigation yielded a significantly stronger Glu reduction after active compared to sham stimulation in female participants, but not in male participants. For rsfcMRI neither significant changes nor correlations with MRS data were observed. Exploratory analyses of the effect of efield intensity distribution on Glu changes showed distinct effects in different efield groups. Our findings are limited by the small sample size, but correspond to previously published results of cathodal tDCS. Future studies should address gender and efield intensity as moderators of tDCS induced effects.

Pubmed ID: 32743758

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FreeSurfer (tool)

RRID:SCR_001847

Open source software suite for processing and analyzing human brain MRI images. Used for reconstruction of brain cortical surface from structural MRI data, and overlay of functional MRI data onto reconstructed surface. Contains automatic structural imaging stream for processing cross sectional and longitudinal data. Provides anatomical analysis tools, including: representation of cortical surface between white and gray matter, representation of the pial surface, segmentation of white matter from rest of brain, skull stripping, B1 bias field correction, nonlinear registration of cortical surface of individual with stereotaxic atlas, labeling of regions of cortical surface, statistical analysis of group morphometry differences, and labeling of subcortical brain structures.Operating System: Linux, macOS.

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R Project for Statistical Computing (tool)

RRID:SCR_001905

Software environment and programming language for statistical computing and graphics. R is integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display. Can be extended via packages. Some packages are supplied with the R distribution and more are available through CRAN family.It compiles and runs on wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS.

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Gannet (tool)

RRID:SCR_016049

Software package designed for the batch analysis of edited magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) data. Gannet runs in Matlab, and is distributed as code rather than executables, empowering users to make local changes. Gannet is designed to run without user intervention, to remove operator variance from the quantification of edited MRS data.

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