Bilateral Brain Dynamics in Cognition and Aging

Summary

This project is focused on the gap in understanding of bilateral brain interactions and their role in helping normative and clinical elderly populations maintain cognitive health. The investigator will focus on investigating this neural mechanism of these interactions and promoting them with a precise application of TMS, in order to test the hypothesis that excitatory interactions between the hemispheres can provide positive outcomes for patients with pre-clinical AD (amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment or MCI-AD). In Session 1, the investigator will establish the spatial specificity of bilateral brain mechanisms with combination of behavior, TMS, and structural neuroimaging in cortical sites known to be active during memory encoding. In Session 2, the investigator will establish the underlying dynamics of interhemispheric communication using a novel combination of TMS and electroencephalography (EEG) to establish the coordinated activity between the hemispheres; Lastly, in Session 3, the investigator will use the TMS entraining parameters delineated in Aim 2 to promote specific cross-hemispheric communication, applied to participants performing a Picture Encoding task, a general task of memory performance. The outcome of these studies will allow our group to evaluate the strength of this brain stimulation protocol in alleviating age-related and dementia-related cognitive decline, and enable development of novel treatment protocols for dementia in elderly cohorts.

Conditions

• Alzheimer Disease
• Aging
• MCI

Interventions

DEVICE

TMS

A multimodal approach consisting of single pulse TMS, dual-coil TMS, and EEG will be used to examine whether synchronous hemispheric interactions associated with TMS will be present in weighted phase-lag coherence (WPLI), if these measures will be enhanced by in-phase TMS and reduced by counter-phase TMS, and if WPLI will be greater for normal controls than MCI-ADs.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Aging (NIA)

  collaborator NIH

• National Institutes of Health (NIH)

  collaborator NIH

• Duke University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Simon Davis, PhD · Duke University

Eligibility

Min Age

60 Years

Max Age

75 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-03-20

Primary Completion

2022-01-20

Completion

2022-01-20

FDA Device

Yes

Countries

• United States

Study Locations