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The influence of white matter lesions on the electric field in transcranial electric stimulation

BACKGROUND: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a promising tool to enhance therapeutic efforts, for instance, after a stroke. The achieved stimulation effects exhibit high inter-subject variability, primarily driven by perturbations of the induced electric field (EF). Differences are...

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Autores principales: Kalloch, Benjamin, Weise, Konstantin, Lampe, Leonie, Bazin, Pierre-Louis, Villringer, Arno, Hlawitschka, Mario, Sehm, Bernhard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9168230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35671557
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2022.103071
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author Kalloch, Benjamin
Weise, Konstantin
Lampe, Leonie
Bazin, Pierre-Louis
Villringer, Arno
Hlawitschka, Mario
Sehm, Bernhard
author_facet Kalloch, Benjamin
Weise, Konstantin
Lampe, Leonie
Bazin, Pierre-Louis
Villringer, Arno
Hlawitschka, Mario
Sehm, Bernhard
author_sort Kalloch, Benjamin
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a promising tool to enhance therapeutic efforts, for instance, after a stroke. The achieved stimulation effects exhibit high inter-subject variability, primarily driven by perturbations of the induced electric field (EF). Differences are further elevated in the aging brain due to anatomical changes such as atrophy or lesions. Informing tDCS protocols by computer-based, individualized EF simulations is a suggested measure to mitigate this variability. OBJECTIVE: While brain anatomy in general and specifically atrophy as well as stroke lesions are deemed influential on the EF in simulation studies, the influence of the uncertainty in the change of the electrical properties of the white matter due to white matter lesions (WMLs) has not been quantified yet. METHODS: A group simulation study with 88 subjects assigned into four groups of increasing lesion load was conducted. Due to the lack of information about the electrical conductivity of WMLs, an uncertainty analysis was employed to quantify the variability in the simulation when choosing an arbitrary conductivity value for the lesioned tissue. RESULTS: The contribution of WMLs to the EF variance was on average only one tenth to one thousandth of the contribution of the other modeled tissues. While the contribution of the WMLs significantly increased ([Formula: see text] in subjects exhibiting a high lesion load compared to low lesion load subjects, typically by a factor of 10 and above, the total variance of the EF didnot change with the lesion load. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that WMLs do not perturb the EF globally and can thus be omitted when modeling subjects with low to medium lesion load. However, for high lesion load subjects, the omission of WMLs may yield less robust local EF estimations in the vicinity of the lesioned tissue. Our results contribute to the efforts of accurate modeling of tDCS for treatment planning.
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spelling pubmed-91682302022-06-07 The influence of white matter lesions on the electric field in transcranial electric stimulation Kalloch, Benjamin Weise, Konstantin Lampe, Leonie Bazin, Pierre-Louis Villringer, Arno Hlawitschka, Mario Sehm, Bernhard Neuroimage Clin Regular Article BACKGROUND: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a promising tool to enhance therapeutic efforts, for instance, after a stroke. The achieved stimulation effects exhibit high inter-subject variability, primarily driven by perturbations of the induced electric field (EF). Differences are further elevated in the aging brain due to anatomical changes such as atrophy or lesions. Informing tDCS protocols by computer-based, individualized EF simulations is a suggested measure to mitigate this variability. OBJECTIVE: While brain anatomy in general and specifically atrophy as well as stroke lesions are deemed influential on the EF in simulation studies, the influence of the uncertainty in the change of the electrical properties of the white matter due to white matter lesions (WMLs) has not been quantified yet. METHODS: A group simulation study with 88 subjects assigned into four groups of increasing lesion load was conducted. Due to the lack of information about the electrical conductivity of WMLs, an uncertainty analysis was employed to quantify the variability in the simulation when choosing an arbitrary conductivity value for the lesioned tissue. RESULTS: The contribution of WMLs to the EF variance was on average only one tenth to one thousandth of the contribution of the other modeled tissues. While the contribution of the WMLs significantly increased ([Formula: see text] in subjects exhibiting a high lesion load compared to low lesion load subjects, typically by a factor of 10 and above, the total variance of the EF didnot change with the lesion load. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that WMLs do not perturb the EF globally and can thus be omitted when modeling subjects with low to medium lesion load. However, for high lesion load subjects, the omission of WMLs may yield less robust local EF estimations in the vicinity of the lesioned tissue. Our results contribute to the efforts of accurate modeling of tDCS for treatment planning. Elsevier 2022-06-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9168230/ /pubmed/35671557 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2022.103071 Text en © 2022 The Author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Regular Article
Kalloch, Benjamin
Weise, Konstantin
Lampe, Leonie
Bazin, Pierre-Louis
Villringer, Arno
Hlawitschka, Mario
Sehm, Bernhard
The influence of white matter lesions on the electric field in transcranial electric stimulation
title The influence of white matter lesions on the electric field in transcranial electric stimulation
title_full The influence of white matter lesions on the electric field in transcranial electric stimulation
title_fullStr The influence of white matter lesions on the electric field in transcranial electric stimulation
title_full_unstemmed The influence of white matter lesions on the electric field in transcranial electric stimulation
title_short The influence of white matter lesions on the electric field in transcranial electric stimulation
title_sort influence of white matter lesions on the electric field in transcranial electric stimulation
topic Regular Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9168230/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35671557
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2022.103071
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