Diminishing Accelerated Long-term Forgetting in Mild Cognitive Impairment

Summary

This study is designed as a prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized parallel-group study that will be completed at the clinical research facility at St. James' Hospital and at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. A total of 100 amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients will receive a (real or control) non-invasive transcutaneous electrical stimulation procedure. Patients will be assigned to one of four groups. One group will receive active stimulation, while the three groups will be control groups. One groups will be receive sham stimulation (inactive control), while a second group will receive active stimulation and local anesthesia and a third group will stimulate a different nerve (active control; same sensation different nerve). The investigators will include three control groups to verify that the effect is real and location specific and cannot be associated to a sensation effect. The investigators have opted to use a parallel-group design as it is unclear what the carry-over effect and/or wash-out period will be for stimulation. To eliminate subjective bias, all patients and the investigator testing the endpoint measures will be blinded to the type of intervention. The primary outcome, i.e. memory recall, will be determined by a word association task recorded immediately after stimulation, 7 days after stimulation, and 28 days after stimulation. The secondary outcomes is neurophysiological changes determined by resting state EEG, which will be assessed immediately before and after stimulation in the first session. The investigators will conduct this study as follows: 1. Screening aMCI patients. 2. Randomly assigning aMCI patients to one of the four groups. 3. Administering one session active stimulation (n = 25) or control (n = 25 in each of three control group) stimulation paired with a word-association task; administered by research assistant. 4. Behavioral assessments after each of the three blocks of studying the word associations and neural measures immediately after the last session of Behavioral assessments (T0). 5. Behavioral assessments at seven (T1) and 28 (T2) days after stimulation.

Timeline

Start

2022-09-01

Primary completion

2025-12-31

Completion

2026-01-01

Publications

• Background Brunoni AR, Amadera J, Berbel B, Volz MS, Rizzerio BG, Fregni F. A systematic review on reporting and assessment of adverse effects associated with transcranial direct current stimulation. Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2011 Sep;14(8):1133-45. doi: 10.1017/S1461145710001690. Epub 2011 Feb 15.
• Background Luckey AM, McLeod SL, Robertson IH, To WT, Vanneste S. Greater Occipital Nerve Stimulation Boosts Associative Memory in Older Individuals: A Randomized Trial. Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2020 Nov;34(11):1020-1029. doi: 10.1177/1545968320943573. Epub 2020 Sep 23.
• Background Vanneste S, Mohan A, Yoo HB, Huang Y, Luckey AM, McLeod SL, Tabet MN, Souza RR, McIntyre CK, Chapman S, Robertson IH, To WT. The peripheral effect of direct current stimulation on brain circuits involving memory. Sci Adv. 2020 Nov 4;6(45):eaax9538. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aax9538. Print 2020 Nov.
• Adcock KS, Lawlor B, Robertson IH, Vanneste S. Diminishing accelerated long-term forgetting in mild cognitive impairment: Study protocol for a prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized controlled trial. Contemp Clin Trials Commun. 2022 Sep 2;30:100989. doi: 10.1016/j.conctc.2022.100989. eCollection 2022 Dec.

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