Electric brain stimulation may prevent falls in the elderly - study

• Author: JERUSALEM POST STAFF
• Published date: 09 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The study team included investigators from Harvard University, research and medical institutions in the US and Spain and the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov). The study was published in the peer-reviewed Annals of Neurology, the journal of the American Neurological Association. The research was funded by a grant from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation.

The researchers, led by Prof. Jeffrey Hausdorff of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, the Sagol School of Neuroscience and the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and Dr. Brad Manor at Harvard Medical School, tested 57 people over the age of 70.

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Each of them was tested with four different treatments: sham, designed not to have any influence at all but to rule out any placebo effects; stimulation of a cognitive area of the brain (DLPFC) that is responsible for dividing attention; stimulation of a sensory-motor area of the brain that contributes to the regulation of walking; and simultaneous stimulation of both areas – motor and cognitive – together.

Each treatment included non-invasive stimulation using a very low-intensity electric current for 20 minutes. Immediately upon the conclusion of the treatment, the walking and standing sway of each subject was evaluated, with and without the request to also perform a cognitive task.

The results showed that stimulation of the cognitive area, whether alone or together with the stimulation of the motor area, reduced the negative effects of the cognitive task on walking and standing stability by about 50%. On the other hand, stimulation of the sensory-motor area alone and sham stimulation did not improve the subjects' performance.

The researchers explained that, since the stimulation is gentle, it does not activate...