Magnetic stimulation of nerve cells in the brain may speed up the recovery from hemispatial neglect, says a new study. The latter is the condition that make some person unable to see or recognize anything on the left side of their body after a stroke. This condition is common after a stroke that occurs on the right side of the brain.
The current treatment of attention and concentration training using computer and pencil-and-paper tasks is inadequate.
In transcranial magnetic stimulation, a large electromagnetic coil is placed against the scalp. It creates electrical currents that stimulate nerve cells.
"The treatment is based on the theory that hemispatial neglect results when a stroke disrupts the balance between the two hemispheres of the brain. A stroke on one side of the brain causes the other side to become overactive, and the circuits become overloaded," said study author Giacomo Koch, MD, PhD, of the Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome, Italy.
The study involved 20 people with hemispatial neglect. Ten received 10 sessions of magnetic stimulation over two weeks. The other 10 people received a sham treatment: the level of stimulation they received was not high enough to stimulate the nerve cells.
Both groups also received the conventional treatment of computer and pen-and-paper training.
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Those who received the magnetic stimulation improved on the tests by 16 percent at the end of treatment and by 22 percent two weeks later. The scores of those who received the sham treatment did not improve.
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"This study represents an important step forward in the effort to find ways to help people rehabilitate from hemispatial neglect after stroke," said Heidi M. Schambra, MD, of Columbia University Medical Center, who wrote an editorial on the study.
The finding has been published in the December 13, 2011, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Source-ANI