Direct current stimulation and epilepsy in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Opportunity and challenges

Abstract

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is one type of neuromodulation, which is an emerging technology that holds promise for the future studies on therapeutic and diagnostic applications in treatment of neurological and psychiatric diseases. Epilepsy is a major problem with devastating effects on patients and their caregivers and has a tremendous socioeconomic impact on families and health-care systems in the Saudi Arabia and worldwide. tDCS is a low-cost, noninvasive portable neuromodulation technique which can transiently decrease or increase cortical excitability in humans and which was invasively demonstrated to reduce epileptiform discharges in animals. This article reviews the tDCS as tools of neuromodulation for epilepsy and discusses the opportunities and challenges available for clinicians and researchers interested in advancing neuromodulation therapy. The aim of this review is to highlight the usefulness of tDCS and to generate an interest that will lead to appropriate studies that assess the true clinical value of tDCS for epilepsy among local clinician and scientist.

Keywords

• brain plasticity
• direct current stimulation
• epilepsy