Efficacy of Left Prefrontal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Improving Negative Symptoms and Acutely Enhancing Attention Functions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Negative symptoms and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia (SZ) significantly affect patients’ quality of life and functionality, but show limited response to antipsychotic treatment. Objectives The present study aims to investigate the acute (n=32) and one-month (n=25; active-tDCS:13 vs. sham-tDCS:12) effects of repeated transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) on negative symptoms and executive attention in recent-onset SZ. Methods In this study, 32 clinically stable SZ patients (age:24.7±4.5, 65% male) with a disease duration under 5 years were included in a single-blind, randomized sham-controlled trial. Patients received 10 sessions of either active-tDCS (n=17) or sham-tDCS (n=15) (anode: left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, DLPFC; cathode: right orbitofrontal region) at 2 mA for 20 minutes, twice daily, across 5 consecutive days and were followed up after the 10th tDCS on day 5 (acute effect), and at weeks 2 and 4. Pre- and post-tDCS assessments included the Brief Negative Symptom Scale (BNSS), Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Calgary Depression Scale for SZ (CDSS), Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF), Clinical Global Impression Scale, Verbal Fluency Test (VFT), and the Penn Computerized Neurocognitive Battery’s Letter N-Back and Continuous Performance Test (CPT). One-way ANCOVA was used to assess between-group changes over time, controlling for pre-tDCS measurements, while mixed-design ANOVA explored time × tDCS-group interactions, followed by repeated measures ANOVA to assess within-group effects. Pairwise comparisons over time within each group were examined using a post-hoc Bonferroni test. Results The active-tDCS group showed significant acute improvements in Avolition-Apathy (AA) (F(1,29)=13.55, p<0.001, pη²=0.319) and Expressive Deficit (EXP) (F(1,29)=4.66, p=0.039, pη²=0.138) domains, BNSS-total (F(1,29)=25.12, p<0.001, pη²=0.464), BPRS-General Psychopathology (F(1,29)=19.68, p<0.001, pη²=0.404), CDSS (F(1,29)=8.16, p=0.008, pη²=0.22) scores, VFT-phonemic fluency (F(1,29)=11.98, p=0.002, pη²=0.292) and CPT (F(1,29)=5.29, p=0.029, pη²=0.154) performances compared to sham-tDCS. Time-group interactions were significant in BNSS-AA domain (F(1,21)=16.44, p<0.001, pη²=0.701), BNSS-total (F(1,21)=15.77, p<0.001, pη²=0.693), and BPRS-General Psychopathology (F(1,21)=6.42, p=0.003, pη²=0.479). Following the mixed-design ANOVA, repeated measures analyses showed significant score decreases over time in the active-tDCS, while the sham group showed no significant changes or a slight increase (only for BNSS-total scores) (Fig. 1). Image 1: Conclusions The present results suggest that anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC may be effective in alleviating negative symptoms, reducing general psychopathology severity, and acutely enhancing complex attention functions and working memory in recent-onset SZ. Disclosure of Interest None Declared
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".