Predictors of efficacy, tolerability and discontinuation of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) for Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD): a meta-analysis and meta-regression
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Numerous patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are refractory to pharmacological treatment, and non-invasive brain neurostimulation has been investigated as another possibility for improving cognition. The performed meta-analysis and meta-regression verified predictors of efficacy, tolerability, and discontinuation of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for treating MCI or AD. The analyzed studies used the Mini-Mental State Exam, Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale - Cognitive Subscale scores as outcome measures. Databases (PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science - primary collection) were searched, resulting in 12 published randomized and controlled trials. The risk of bias assessment was based on Cochrane Review recommendations, considering study characteristics. Other evaluated outcomes were the number of adverse effects (tolerability) and dropouts. Overall and anodal tDCS improved cognition compared to the sham protocol. Group comparisons did not show statistically significant differences for adverse effects and dropouts. Session duration was a response predictor, as stimulations of up to 20 minutes for ten days or more improved the outcome achievement. The AD diagnosis covariate also affected efficacy. The findings should be interpreted carefully in clinical practice because the stimulation effect may vary among subjects.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".