Examining transcranial direct current stimulation efficacy on the auditory cortex excitability of healthy individuals and patients with dyslexia

• Applicant: Professor Tino Zaehle, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 375301599

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) - one of the most frequently used non-invasive brain stimulation method - has been already successfully applied to alter auditory cortex (AC) reactivity (Zaehle et al., 2011a;Heimrath et al., 2015), it´s related individual spectro-temporal processing abilities (Ladeira et al., 2011;Heimrath et al., 2014) and acoustic speech perception (Heimrath et al., 2016). These findings strongly implicate tDCS application as a therapeutic tool on speech-related disorders such as dyslexia. Yet, the exact neurophysiological mechanisms underlying tDCS induced changes as well as advanced stimulation parameters for optimal auditory tDCS applications are unknown. In work package I of the current project we aim to (a) systematically investigate the tDCS related changes of the homeostatic balance of excitatory/inhibitory neurotransmission using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and (b) optimize AC stimulation schemes using state of the art simulations of current density distributions on individual anatomical data. Subsequently, in work package II we aim to apply optimized auditory tDCS schemes to improve acoustic processing abilities in adults and adolescents with dyslexia.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants