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Safety of Slow-Pulsed Transcranial Electrical Stimulation in Acute Spike Suppression

A cloud of source-sink electrodes selected for TES. The 15 large blue electrodes are those selected as cathodes, and the 15 large red electrodes are those selected as anodes. The arrows pointing away from the left anterior temporal lobe represent the cortical patches selected for target spike cluster localization.
A cloud of source-sink electrodes selected for TES. The 15 large blue electrodes are those selected as cathodes, and the 15 large red electrodes are those selected as anodes. The arrows pointing away from the left anterior temporal lobe represent the cortical patches selected for target spike cluster localization.
A cloud of source-sink electrodes selected for TES. The 15 large blue electrodes are those selected as cathodes, and the 15 large red electrodes are those selected as anodes. The arrows pointing away from the left anterior temporal lobe represent the cortical patches selected for target spike cluster localization.

Ann Clin Transl Neurol. 2019 Dec;6(12):2579-2585. doi: 10.1002/acn3.50934. Epub 2019 Nov 11.
Holmes MD1, Feng R2, Wise MV1, Ma C2, Ramon C1,3, Wu J2, Luu P4, Hou J5, Pan L2, Tucker DM4.

Abstract

We examined the effects of slow-pulsed transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) in suppressing epileptiform discharges in seven adults with refractory epilepsy. An MRI-based realistic head model was constructed for each subject and co-registered with 256-channel dense EEG (dEEG). Interictal spikes were localized, and TES targeted the cortical source of each subject's principal spike population. Targeted spikes were suppressed in five subject's (29/35 treatment days overall), and nontargeted spikes were suppressed in four subjects. Epileptiform activity did not worsen. This study suggests that this protocol, designed to induce long-term depression (LTD), is safe and effective in acute suppression of interictal epileptiform discharges.

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