Home-based transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improves cognitive control in patients with ADHD
Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom
Yoonju Cho1,2, Nicole L. Brocious1, Arielle R. Rubel1, Haojue Yu1, Alexandra G. O’Neil1, Allyson Smith1, H. Hamdi Eryilmaz1,2, Asif Jamil1,2, Joan A. Camprodon1,2,3; 1Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Division of Neuropsychiatry and Neuromodulation, 2Harvard Medical School, 3Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Neurology
ADHD is a debilitating disorder. Current treatments are effective for inattention and hyperactivity, but not for the dysexecutive symptoms, most closely associated with functional impairments. Our previous work showed that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can improve cognitive control and its neurophysiological signatures in patients with ADHD. Based on this work, we devised a parallel-design, randomized, placebo-controlled mechanistic trial to assess the impact of 4 weeks of daily home-tDCS on clinical, cognitive, and neurophysiological measures of executive function in adults with ADHD. Participants self-administer tDCS (left dorsolateral prefrontal anodal, right orbitofrontal cathodal, 2mA, 30min/day, 28 days) at home and complete 4 in-office visits (baseline, week 1, week 4 or immediately after, and week 8 or 1 month after stimulation completion) to capture clinical and cognitive scales, and the Eriksen Flanker Task with EEG. Preliminary analyses from 31 completers show that home-tDCS is safe and well tolerated. Active tDCS improves reaction time in Incongruent trials at week 4 (β=73.4ms; 95% confidence interval, [49.29ms, 97.508ms]; p<0.001) and at week 8 (β=109.9ms; [90.104ms, 129.696ms]; p<0.0001), which is significantly different from sham at week 4 (β=80.7ms; [61.83ms, 99.57ms]; p<0.001) and week 8 (β=112ms; [91.42ms, 132.58ms]; p<0.001). Active tDCS improves accuracy at week 4 (β=-0.360; [-0.580, -0.140]; p<0.01), but not at week 8 (β=-0.0189; [-0.2443, 0.2065]; p=0.983). Preliminary results suggest that 4 weeks of daily home-tDCS effectively improves executive functioning in adults with ADHD. Analysis of clinical, neurophysiological and additional cognitive measures is ongoing and will be presented at the conference.
Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Monitoring & inhibitory control
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March 29–April 1 | 2025
