Transcutaneous spinal direct current stimulation (tsDCS) does not affect postural sway of young and healthy subjects during quiet upright standing

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 17; no. 4; p. e0267718
• Main Authors: Fava de Lima, Felipe, Silva, Cristiano Rocha, Kohn, Andre Fabio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 28.04.2022; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Biology and Life Sciences; Biomedical engineering; Central nervous system; Computer and Information Sciences; Direct current; Electric currents; Electric fields; Electrical stimuli; Electrodes; Evaluation; Healthy Volunteers; Humans; Hypotheses; Laboratories; Legs; Magnetic brain stimulation; Medicine and Health Sciences; Nervous system; Neural networks; Neuromodulation; Oscillations; Pain Management; Pain perception; Posture; Proprioception; Social Sciences; Spinal cord; Spinal Cord - physiology; Standing Position; Statistical analysis; Stimulation; Thorax; Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation - methods; Vertebrae; Brazil
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267718

Transcutaneous spinal direct current stimulation (tsDCS) is an effective non-invasive spinal cord electrical stimulation technique to induce neuromodulation of local and distal neural circuits of the central nervous system (CNS). Applied to the spinal cord lumbosacral region, tsDCS changes electrophysiological responses of the motor, proprioceptive and nociceptive pathways, alters the performance of some lower limb motor tasks and can even modulate the behavior of supramedullary neuronal networks. In this study an experimental protocol was conducted to verify if tsDCS (5 mA, 20 minutes) of two different polarizations, applied over the lumbosacral region (tenth thoracic vertebrae (T10)), can induce changes in postural sway oscillations of young healthy individuals during quiet standing. A novel initialization of the electrical stimulation was developed to improve subject blinding to the different stimulus conditions including the sham trials. Measures of postural sway, both global and structural, were computed before, during and following the DC stimulation period. The results indicated that, for the adopted conditions, tsDCS did not induce statistically significant changes in postural sway of young healthy individuals during quiet standing.