Is the "end-of-study guess" a valid measure of sham blinding during transcranial direct current stimulation?

ABSTRACT: Studies using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) typically incorporate a fade-in, short-stimulation, fade-out sham (placebo) protocol, which is assumed to be indistinct from a 10-30 min active protocol on the scalp. However, many studies report that participants can dissociate active stimulation from sham, even during low-intensity 1 mA currents. We recently identified differences in the perception of an active (10 min of 1 mA) and a sham (20 s of 1 mA) protocol that lasted for 5 min after the cessation of sham. In the present study we assessed whether delivery of a higher-intensity 2 mA current would exacerbate these differences. Two protocols were delivered to 32 adults in a double-blinded, within-subjects design (active: 10 min of 2 mA, and sham: 20 s of 2 mA), with the anod

SUBMITTER: Turner C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8048983 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature