The Use of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to Study Implicit Motor Learning on Patients With Brain Injury

Status

Withdrawn

Phases

Phase 1

Study type

Interventional

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT01127789

Enrollment

Registered

2010-05-21

Start date

2010-03-31

Completion date

2012-11-30

Last updated

2012-12-21

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Stroke, Traumatic Brain Injury

Brief summary

The purpose of this study is to study motor learning and recovery of patients with brain damage caused by traumatic brain injury or stroke with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). It is hypothesized that anodal tDCS on the lesion side and/or cathodal tDCS on the healthy side of motor cortex could improve the recovery of motor function such as learning.

Detailed description

We aim to apply transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to study the recovery process of motor learning on the patients with brain damage caused by traumatic brain injury or stroke. Both anodal and cathodal tDCS will be used to test whether the increase of motor cortical activity by anodal tDCS over lesional side or the decrease of brain activity by cathodal tDCS on healthy side will improve the learning skill (SRTT: serial reaction time task). The result could help to understand the mechanism of motor and cognitive recovery after brain damage, and further rationalize the application of non-invasive brain stimulation such as tDCS for patient rehabilitation.

Interventions

DEVICETranscranial Direct Current Stimulation

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

Study design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

DOUBLE (Subject, Investigator)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

18 Years to 65 Years

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

* TBI or stroke patients * with partially preserved fine motor function

Exclusion criteria

* with metal clips in head or device (e.g. pacemaker) * with active CNS drugs

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Reaction time (millisecond)	24 hours post intervention	Primary outcome measure is the average reaction time of 360 trials from each block -- the task is composed of 8 blocks. After intervention, 3 blocks will be re-tested for 3 times to evaluate the consolidating effect of tDCS on motor learning.

Secondary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Error rate (percentage)	24 hours post intervention	Secondary outcome measure is the error rate of each block which will be re-tested for 3 times after intervention. The aim is to evaluate the motor learning effect during and after tDCS.

Countries

Taiwan

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026