ARTICLE INFO

Article Type

Original Research

Authors

Arastoo   A.A. (1)
Parsaei   S. (*2)
Zahednejad   Sh. (3)
Alboghebish   S. (2)
BurBur   A. (4)






(*2) Sports Psychology Department, Physical Education Faculty, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran
(1) “Social Factors Affecting Health Research Center” and “Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Research Center” and “Public Health Department, Health Faculty”, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran
(3) “Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Research Center” and “Physical Therapy Department, Rehabilitation Faculty”, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran
(4) Physical Education Department, Literature & Human Sciences Faculty, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran

Correspondence

Article History

Received:  September  29, 2018
Accepted:  March 25, 2019
ePublished:  July 21, 2019

BRIEF TEXT


... [1-5]. Disability in the person can lead to various emotions, including a lack of willingness to participate in social activities and subsequently a decrease in self-esteem, feeling inadequate and burdensomeness, feeling sad and depressed, etc. [6].

... [7-10]. Given the important and determining role of reaction time in sporting events, various methods are being used today to reduce reaction time among researchers, coaches, and athletes to increase the likelihood of success for athletes [11]. One of the techniques nowadays used by researchers in cognitive science and neuroscience to improve cognitive, sensory, attention, and motor functions, etc., is transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) [12]. ... [13]. The efficacy of tDCS has been confirmed in a several cases, including depression, increased cognitive control, motor impairment in children and adolescents, improved retention in overactive children, cognitive functioning, and cognitive rehabilitation [14]. ... [15]. … [16]. Zamani et al. have shown that direct stimulation of the brain in the prefrontal cortex can improve working memory and decrease reaction time in athlete girls [17]. Vafai & Ramezani have shown that direct stimulation of the brain beyond the skull has significant therapeutic effects on the mental health of veterans with mental disorders [18]. [19].

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of tDCS on reaction time in veterans and athletes with disabilities.

This research is a semi-experimental study with pre-test post-test design.

This research was conducted among all veterans and athletes with disabilities, who were members of Veterans and disabled board of Shiraz in 2018.

Twenty-four subjects were selected by convenience sampling method and were divided into two groups of experimental and artificial groups. Inclusion criteria included being an athlete (doing physical activity at least three days a week regularly), no surgery in the head area, no neurological and psychological disorders, no heart and psychological diseases, and no use of nervous system stimulants. Exclusion criteria included unwillingness to continue study, absence of one or more sessions in the research process, inability to perform visual and auditory reaction time tests, and severe sensitivity and obsession to electrical stimulation.

The following tools were used to conduct the study: 1- Transcranial electrical stimulation device: The NEUROSTIM2 transcranial electrical stimulation device (Medina Tabgaster Co., Iran) was used for brain stimulation. 2- Stroop effect device during psychological retardation: This device is capable of displaying audiovisual stimuli. The outputs can be displayed as an Excel file with the ability to display the response time in milliseconds and the selected response type for the first and second stimuli. Al-Boughbish et al. reported the reliability of this test as 0.80 [20]. First, all participants were given a simple and selective reaction time test. Each participant performed a reaction time test once and his best record was recorded as a pre-test score. Afterwards, participants were randomly divided into two groups of electrical stimulation and artificial group. The acquisition phase consisted of 3 sessions every other day. In the experimental transcranial electrical stimulation group, the anode electrode (3.5 cm2) was placed at the C4 point (based on 10-20 electroencephalography system) and the cathode electrode (3.5 cm2) was placed above the FP1, so that the distance between the two electrodes was at least 6 cm [21]. The duration of electrical stimulation in each session was 20 min by 1.5 mA. In the non-real stimulation groups, anode and cathode electrodes were as the experimental group positioned at C4 and FP1, respectively. However, the stimulation flow stopped after 30 s of stimulation. None of the subjects was aware of the type of intervention (real or non-real stimulation). After the last training session, the post-test was performed. Participation in the research process was completely voluntary, and all participants were informed that they are free to withdraw from the research process at any time. Moreover, the effectiveness and safety of tDCS was described to all participants. Data were analyzed by SPSS 22 software using independent T-test to compare demographic characteristics of the two groups and multivariate analysis of covariance to compare the simple and selective reaction time of the two groups in the pretest and posttest stages.

There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of demographic characteristics and the two groups were homogeneous (p> 0.05; Table 1).In the post-test, there was a significant difference between the experimental group and the artificial group in the simple reaction time and choice reaction time and the performance of the experimental group was better than the artificial group (Tables 2 and 3).

The results of the present study are in line with those of Theo et al., Zamani et al., Vafai & Ramezani and Arias et al. [16-19]. ... [22-25]. Marquez et al. stated that the best and most common electrical stimulation protocol for the brain to improve hand-related movements, such as performing large-scale hand movements, hand grip force as well as the reaction time required to move the hand can be achieved when the anode electrode is at the CZ point and the cathode electrode is at the FP1 point [21]. Sotchk et al. reported the contradictory findings with this study. They showed by transcranial electrical stimulation of the posterior middle part of frontal cortex (dMFC), electrical stimulation of the dMFC did not affect the reaction time of the first task, but it significantly improved the second task. The differences can be due to the different types of stimulation, type of task and different part of stimulation. These factors led to different findings from the present study [26]. Vafai & Rezae in a study on veterans with mental health problems in Yasuj found that using 2 mA electrical stimulation could improve mental health in veterans with mental disorders [18] .... [27] , 28].

It is suggested that a similar study be performed to investigate changes in neural structures.

One of the limitations of this study was the lack of access to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine changes in the participants' central nervous system and neuroplasticity due to electrical stimulation.

Anodal tDCS of C4 region can improve the simple and choice reaction time in veterans and athletes with disabilities.

We would like to thank all the participants in the research as well as the officials of the Veterans and Disabled Board of Shiraz.

None declared.

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences (Approval code: IR.AJUMS.REC.1397.401).

This article is extracted from a research at the Jundishapur University of Ahwaz.

TABLES and CHARTS

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CITIATION LINKS

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