Effect of Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation(tACS) for Early Alzheimer's Disease

Upon meeting the inclusion criteria and providing informed consent, each participant will complete a series of cognitive assessments and tACS at the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui medical university. Patients were randomly allocated to tACS group and the sham group. There are about 20 patients in each group. For the all patients, allocation was by coin toss. Patients were studied using a double-blind design. Study participants and all personnel responsible for the clinical care of the patient remained masked to allocated condition and allocation parameters. Only tACS administrators had access to the randomization list; they had minimal contact with the patients, and no role in cognitive and symptom assessments. Each patient would be treated for continuous 14 days by tACS.

Before the tACS treatment, a series of cognitive assessments and neuropsychological tests were obtained by a trained investigator to assess baseline. Each assessment will involve a set of assessment tools, the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-Cog) as the primary outcome measure and various other tasks and questionnaires to measure cognition (including MoCA,MMSE, DS, Stroop test, TMT, BNT-30, VFT, CDT,JLOT. Form H,HVOT), memory (CAVLT, LMT), emotion(HAMA-17,HAMD-14,GDS-30), behavioral and psychological symptoms(NPI), and treatment tolerability. All the tests are conducted in two days. The patient received resting EEG data collection. After the last treatment, the MoCA, and associative memory were obtained, as well as the Global Index of Safety to assess adverse events of the treatment. Patients were instructed to focus their answers on the past 14 days. The patients had also receiving a battery measure of neuropsychological tests, resting EEG. Two months after the last treatment, participants were interviewed to obtain the same assessment as before. They were instructed to focus their answers on the past months.

• electroencephalography [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• Associative Memory [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• MMSE(Mini Mental State Examination) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• LMT (Logic Memory Test) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• DST (Digital Span Test; Forward and Backward) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• TMT (Trail Making Test) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• HAMD (Hamilton Depression Scale) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• HAMA (Hamilton Anxiety Scale) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• NPI (Neuropsychiatric Inventory) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• changes in Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• GDS(Geriatric depression scale) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]
• JLOT(Judgment of line Judgment of line orientation test orientation test) [Time frame: changes from baseline at 14 days and 12 weeks post-treatment]