효과적인 심부 피질 자극을 위한 경두개 직류전기자극 전극 배치법

Abstract

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) delivers electrical current to the cortex to modulate neuronal excitability using electrodes attached on the scalp. The degree of modulation is depending on the magnitude of current density which are mainly determined by the placement of electrodes. Most previous studies generally stimulated relatively superficial cortex area with a conventional electrode montage. Here, we investigate the optimal montage via two finite element models for stimulating four different targets located at nonsuperfical cortex area: foot motor cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) and primary visual cortex (V1). The optimal electrode montage was determined based on international 10-20 system for each target and compared with the conventional montage to confirm the effectiveness of the optimal electrode montage. From the results, we proposed the optimal electrode placement with C3-C4 montage for foot motor, attaching anode to F3 for dmPFC, F7-Fp2 for mOFC and Oz-Fpz for V1. Our results showed that the optimal electrode montage was more effective than the conventional electrode one in all cases, which implied that the simulation study would be needed to determine the electrode placements for effective stimulation.