Clinical Research Directory

The Efficacy of Non-invasive Brain Stimulation on Cognitive Functions in Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Double-Blinded Randomised Controlled Trial

The goal of this clinical trial is to examine if non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) can enhance cognitive function with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) population. The main questions it aims to answer are: * What is the possibility effect of using the NIBS on cognitive functions as well as the cardiopulmonary parameters in COPD population? * What is the relation between cognitive function parameters and cardiopulmonary parameters in COPD population who suffer from cognitive impairment (CI)? Researchers will compare NIBS to a sham-NIBS to see if NIBS works to improve cognitive function in COPD population. Participants will: Receive NIBS or a sham-NIBS 5 sessions/week for 3 weeks for 20 min each session. Visit the clinic at the beginning for baseline assessment then after the completion of the 3 weeks to reassess them. Outcome measures for cognitive parameters and pulmonary parameters will be taken pre and post NIBS intervention

Neural Mechanisms of Interpersonal Expectations on Negative Affect

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn whether non-invasive brain stimulation, called transcranial temporal interference stimulation (tTIS), can reduce negative affect, and how expectations shaped by care providers influence these effects. The main questions this study aims to answer are: (1)Does active tTIS reduce negative affect more effectively than sham (inactive) tTIS? (2)Do positive treatment expectations enhance the effects compared to negative expectations? Participants will: (1) Receive either active or sham tTIS. (2) Be provided with positive or negative messaging regarding treatment effectiveness. (3) Interact with care providers and complete assessments measuring negative affect and physiological responses.

Closed-loop Non-invasive Brain Stiumlation

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a widely used tool for exploring brain function in humans (Siebner et al. et al., 2022), which has led to new therapeutics for various psychiatric and neurological disorders (Lefaucheur et al., 2020). However, the open-loop use of this technique has raised questions about its operating principle, due to the high degree of heterogeneity of results and the small to medium observed effect sizes (Zrenner and Ziemann, 2023). To increase the response rate, it has been suggested to individualize stimulation, by adapting the TMS parameters (i.e. delivered dose, target dose, targeting, timing, etc.) to instantaneous estimates of brain brain state. Such an approach, known as closed-loop closed-loop stimulation, is currently one of the main challenges challenges in this field (closed-loop brain state-dependent stimulation). To this end, we are focusing on the combination of robotic TMS and electroencephalography (EEG) (Hernandez-Pavon et al. al., 2023). The closed-loop stimulations using this combination developed to date have two limitations: (i) they are not adaptive and focus focus mainly on calculating the phase of brain oscillations to trigger stimulation and (ii) are limited to central cortical (sensorimotor) areas, where the EEG signal-to-noise ratio is optimal. This project aims to develop closed-loop TMS-EEG protocols that overcome these two limitations: (i) by incorporating adaptive decision modeling (AutoHS model, Harquel et al. 2017) to optimize several parameters in parallel (coil location, orientation, intensity) while using a wider range of EEG markers (evoked potentials, oscillatory activity strength, connectivity, etc.), and (ii) by integrating real-time EEG pre-processing to access any cortical target (including frontal, temporal and occipital lobes).