Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine (Jan 2015)

Effect of transcranial direct current stimulation on prefrontal inhibition in schizophrenia patients with persistent auditory hallucinations: A study on antisaccade task performance

  • Aditi Subramaniam,
  • Sri Mahavir Agarwal,
  • Sunil Kalmady,
  • Venkataram Shivakumar,
  • Harleen Chhabra,
  • Anushree Bose,
  • Dinakaran Damodharan,
  • Janardhanan C Narayanaswamy,
  • Sam B Hutton,
  • Ganesan Venkatasubramanian

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4103/0253-7176.168584
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 37, no. 4
pp. 419 – 422

Abstract

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Background: Deficient prefrontal cortex inhibitory control is of particular interest with regard to the pathogenesis of auditory hallucinations (AHs) in schizophrenia. Antisaccade task performance is a sensitive index of prefrontal inhibitory function and has been consistently found to be abnormal in schizophrenia. Methods: This study investigated the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on antisaccade performance in 13 schizophrenia patients. Results: The tDCS resulted in significant reduction in antisaccade error percentage (t = 3.4; P = 0.005), final eye position gain (t = 2.3; P = 0.042), and AHs severity (t = 4.1; P = 0.003). Conclusion: Our results raise the possibility that improvement in antisaccade performance and severity of AH may be mechanistically related.

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