NCT04154397: P

Posture Training and Cerebellar Stimulation in Elderly People

Completed NA Last updated 6 November 2019

What this trial tests

NA trial testing cerebellar transcranial stimulation in Transcranial Electrical Stimulation in 100 participants. Completed in 30 September 2019.

Timeline

20 May 2015

Primary endpoint
24 January 2019

30 September 2019

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	National Cheng-Kung University Hospital
Phase	NA
Status	Completed
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	parallel
Masking	single
Primary purpose	basic science
Enrollment	100
Start date	20 May 2015
Primary completion	24 January 2019
Estimated completion	30 September 2019

Drugs / interventions tested

• cerebellar transcranial stimulation

Conditions studied

• Transcranial Electrical Stimulation — all drugs for Transcranial Electrical Stimulation →

Sponsor

National Cheng-Kung University Hospital

Who can join

60 and older, any sex, with Transcranial Electrical Stimulation. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Motor learning relies on both feedback and feedforward mechanisms to keep progressive optimization of motor behaviors in a coordinated manner. Error correction based on the fronto-parietal loop is subject to error information inherent within visual feedback. On the other hand, cerebellar activity for restoration of efferent copy involves in operation of feedforward mechanism. Therefore, the amount of error feedback and excitation of cerebellum are keyed to effectiveness of motor learning. Although postural training is of empirical value to prevent falling from the elderly, yet none of previous studies have ever been devoted to improve effectiveness of postural training via manipulations of visual error feedback and cerebellar stimulation.

From the aspect of cognition-motor interaction, the present proposal is a three-year project intended to promote effectiveness of postural training for the elderly. In the first year, feedback-based training benefits from a dynamic postural task under the conditions of different visual size of error feedback (error-reducing feedback, error-enhancing feedback, and fixed error feedback) will be contrasted. In the second year, feedforward-based training benefits from a dynamic postural task by application of cerebellum transcranial electrical stimulation (ctDCS) of different modes (direct current vs. noise vs. sham) will be contrasted. In the third year, the proposal will examine whether postural training with combined approach (error-enhancing feedback and ctDCS) could result in a superior training benefit to those of error-enhancing feedback alone and ctDCS alone approaches. In addition to innovative training intervention, this proposal will make use of current non-linear analyses on EEG signals and postural sway with graph analysis and heading analysis, respectively. It is expected to gain additional insight into behavior and brain mechanisms underlying learning-related changes with the postural training, potentially lending to a more effective training paradigm for postural stability of the elderly.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial. Completed trials usually publish results within 12-18 months.