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MI Practice and tDCS With Aging

NCT02813291 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 64

Last updated 2025-09-03

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The mental repetition of movements - or motor imagery (MI) practice - facilitates motor learning. It allows avoiding fatigue that occurs during physical practice; this method is thus particularly interesting for elderly people. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive method of neurostimulation during which a low direct current is applied to the brain via electrodes placed on the scalp. This method has been successfully used to enhance motor learning in both young and elderly subjects.

The main aim of this study is to assess the impact of MI practice combined with tDCS on the learning of a complex finger sequence, in young and elderly subjects.

For that purpose, young and elderly healthy subjects will be randomly assigned to Stimulation and Sham groups. There will thus be a total of four groups: Young Stim, Young Sham, Elderly Stim, and Elderly Sham.

All subjects will participate to three training sessions spread over five days, and a retention test one week after the third training session.

During training they will mentally repeat a complex finger sequence with the left hand, for 13 min:

* Subjects of the Stimulation groups (Young Stim and Elderly Stim) will receive in parallel an anodal tDCS of the primary motor cortex.
* Subjects of the Sham groups (Young Sham and Elderly Sham) will receive in parallel a sham tDCS of the primary motor cortex.

Immediately before (pretest) and after (posttest) each training session, as well as during the retention test, subjects will repeat the sequence as many times of possible, for 1 min. During these tests (pretests, posttests and retention test) electroencephalographic activity will be recorded to assess the Mu rhythm power.

Conditions

  • Aging
  • Motor Learning

Interventions

DEVICE

tDCS

All subjects will mentally repeat a complex finger sequence with the left hand, for 13 min: \- Subjects of the Stimulation groups (Young Stim and Elderly Stim) will receive in parallel an anodal tDCS of the primary motor cortex.

DEVICE

sham tDCS

All subjects will mentally repeat a complex finger sequence with the left hand, for 13 min: \- Subjects of the Sham groups (Young Sham and Elderly Sham) will receive in parallel a sham tDCS of the primary motor cortex.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Hospices Civils de Lyon

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Pierre Krolak-Salmon, Pr, PU-PH · Hospices Civils de Lyon - Hôpital des Charpennes

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
DOUBLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
20 Years
Max Age
80 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2017-04-26
Primary Completion
2019-03-22
Completion
2019-03-22

Countries

  • France

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT02813291 on ClinicalTrials.gov