Webinar #7: Individualizing transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to improve motor learning in stroke: i-tDCS
January 7, 2021, 16:00 CET
To celebrate the start of a new year, we will kick off 2021 with a Webinar. Not one, but four presenters will join us to share their knowledge about transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS). The webinar will be held on January 7, 16:00 CET. Register here!
About the talk
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is an innovative treatment modality in which a small current is applied to the brain using surface electrodes. It has been shown to enhance motor learning in healthy subjects and stroke patients and is therefore considered a potential new clinical tool for rehabilitation after stroke. However, even though several studies in sub-acute and chronic stroke patients have shown highly promising results, other studies did not show the added value of tDCS. The inconsistent results may largely be due to a lack of mechanistic understanding and tools to target tDCS to the individual patient.
”In our research, we aim to develop monitoring tools of individual functional brain organization of stroke patients that allow for individually targeted tDCS treatment for motor rehabilitation after stroke, integrated with a direct monitoring of its physiological and behavioral effects. In this webinar, we will present the background of this project together with the tools we developed, which includes methods to estimate and take into account the conductive property of stroke lesions in individualized models during non-invasive brain stimulation and EEG techniques to measure the effect of brain stimulation on motor learning.”
Read more about this interesting research in their related publications: BDNF Val66Met but not transcranial direct current stimulation affects motor learning after stroke, No effect of anodal tDCS on motor cortical excitability and no evidence for responders in a large double-blind placebo-controlled trial and TMS motor mapping: Comparing the absolute reliability of digital reconstruction methods to the golden standard.
About the speakers
Dr. Ruud Selles is an associate professor at the departments of Rehabilitation Medicine and Plastic Surgery at the Erasmus MC. He leads a research group on hand surgery and hand rehabilitation with interests in neurorehabilitation and neuromodulation, musculoskeletal disorders, ultrasound imaging and clinical study design. His main fields of application are disorders of the upper extremity, especially in stroke, hand arthrosis, hand trauma and Dupuytren’s disease. His stroke research aims at developing prediction models for upper limb stroke recovery and interventions to increase upper extremity functioning, including research on the use of transcranial direct current stimulation to enhance motor learning in stroke. Ruud Selles has authored over 160 peer-reviewed publications and received numerous grants for his research.
Dr. Maria-Carla Piastra got both her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Mathematics at the University of Genova, Italy. She obtained a PhD degree in Applied Mathematics at the University of Muenster, Germany, and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Genova, Italy. She was postdoc at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands and, currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow working at the Department of Neuroinformatics, Radboud University Nijmegen. Her interests include bioelectromagnetism in the human brain, methods to solve partial differential equations in neuroscience and processing of mice brain slice images.
Ir. Joris van der Cruijsen obtained his MSc in Biomedical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology.
Currently, he is in his 4th year of his PhD at the department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Erasmus University
Medical Center. In his PhD project, he combines transcranial electric/magnetic stimulation with high-density EEG
to better understand the functional and neurophysiologic response to non-invasive brain stimulation
Mana Manoochehri obtained her PhD degree in Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering at University of Picardie Jules Verne, France. She is a Postdoctoral fellow working at the Department of Mechanical engineering, Delft University of Technology. She is working on projects related to neuromuscular, auditory, and pain perception systems, aiming to develop novel ways of monitoring and treating neurological diseases and sensory impairments through quantitative models of the brain, e.g. by using high-density EEG.
