tDCS as Treatment for Motor Function

Previous preliminary results are sufficiently impressive to suggest that tDCS stimulation does have the potential to improve motor function when that ability is trained during stimulation. In the proposed study, the investigators will assess whether walking sessions combined with tDCS lead to improvements in motor function: gait, articulation, eye gaze, and motor dexterity. In addition, the investigators wish to examine if such results can be replicated in people with other conditions, such as cortical basal syndrome, and Parkinson's disease. The rationale for including people living with these conditions is the overlap in motor and cortical network dysfunction observed across these disorders. All three conditions involve impairment of motor initiation, gait, coordination, and executive motor control due to degeneration in frontal-subcortical pathways. This extension will also allow for comparison of stimulation responsiveness across related diagnostic groups and provide insight into disease-specific factors influencing motor recovery potential.

Previous tDCS studies have found significant results with sample sizes between 10-20 participants for a two-round study comparing training sessions with real tDCS versus sessions done without tDCS. However, the investigators plan to recruit 30 participants living with each condition as this will allow us to examine results per group, but also how the individual groups compare.

• Articulation Quality (Clinician-Rated Speech Production on Word and Sentence Repetition) [Time frame: Measures collected at three points each round: baseline in week 1, post-treatment at the final stimulation session, and follow-up two weeks after the final session.]
• Eye-Gaze Control (Clinician-Rated Ability to Track a Moving Target) [Time frame: Measures collected at three points each round: baseline in week 1, post-treatment at the final stimulation session, and follow-up two weeks after the final session.]