Assessment of Depression Symptoms, Motor Learning, and Cognitive Function after Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Ischemic Stroke

Aims: Stroke leads to many symptoms, such as defects in motor, sensation, language, and cognitive functions, which may help patients recover sooner using complementary techniques. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate depression symptoms, motor learning, and cognitive function after transcranial direct current stimulation in patients with ischemic stroke. Materials Methods: The current randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted on patients with ischemic stroke in Zanjan City in 2019-2020. 35 patients were randomly selected and assigned to the tDCS (12), Sham (12), and Control (11) groups. The Fugl-Meyer Assessment, Hamilton depression symptoms test, Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and Mini-Mental State Examination were used for evaluation. The first group received consecutive anodal stimulation in M1damH+Left-DLPFC areas, 12 sessions of 60 minutes, the second group received Sham-tDCS, and the third group (the control group) did not receive any intervention. The Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multivariate covariance analysis using SPSS 23 software. Findings: A significant difference was observed between the study groups after the intervention and one month later in motor function, depression symptoms, and cognitive function (p=0.001). According to the paired comparison, the differences between the tDCS group and each of the sham and control groups were bigger. Still, no significant difference was detected between the control and sham groups in these outcome variables. Conclusion: tDCS leads to the improvement of motor learning, cognitive functions, and depression symptoms in stroke patients, and its effects remain significant after the intervention.