The efficacy of transcranial alternating current stimulation for treating post-stroke depression: Study Protocol Clinical Trial (SPIRIT Compliant)

Working Memory and Transcranial-Alternating Current Stimulation-State of the Art: Findings, Missing, and Challenges

Working memory (WM) is a cognitive process that involves maintaining and manipulating information for a short period of time. WM is central to many cognitive processes and declines rapidly with age. Deficits in WM are seen in older adults and in patients with dementia, schizophrenia, major depression, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, etc. The frontal, parietal, and occipital cortices are significantly involved in WM processing and all brain oscillations are implicated in tackling WM tasks, particularly theta and gamma bands. The theta/gamma neural code hypothesis assumes that retained memory items are recorded via theta-nested gamma cycles. Neuronal oscillations can be manipulated by sensory, invasive- and non-invasive brain stimulations. Transcranial alternating-current stimulation (tACS) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are frequency-tuned non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques that have been used to entrain endogenous oscillations in a frequency-specific manner. Compared to rTMS, tACS demonstrates superior cost, tolerability, portability, and safety profile, making it an attractive potential tool for improving cognitive performance. Although cognitive research with tACS is still in its infancy compared to rTMS, a number of studies have shown a promising WM enhancement effect, especially in the elderly and patients with cognitive deficits. This review focuses on the various methods and outcomes of tACS on WM in healthy and unhealthy human adults and highlights the established findings, unknowns, challenges, and perspectives important for translating laboratory tACS into realistic clinical settings. This will allow researchers to identify gaps in the literature and develop frequency-tuned tACS protocols with promising safety and efficacy outcomes. Therefore, research efforts in this direction should help to consider frequency-tuned tACS as a non-pharmacological tool of cognitive rehabilitation in physiological aging and patients with cognitive deficits.

Research on Influencing Factors of Clinical Efficacy of Meniscus Resection Based on Logistic Regression Analysis

In order to solve the factors affecting the clinical efficacy of meniscus resection, a method based on logistic regression analysis is proposed. From May 2019 to May 2020, 60 patients with discoid meniscus who underwent arthroscopic surgery in the Joint Department of the Second Hospital of a certain city were selected as the research objects; the surgical methods are divided into partial meniscus excision and plasty and total meniscus resection. The Lysholm function score was used to evaluate the clinical efficacy of arthroscopic surgery for discoid meniscus injuries before and 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery and postoperative application of Ikeuchi score and Tegner exercise ability score to assess age, gender, body mass index (BMI), duration of symptoms, and the influence of meniscus injury types and surgical methods on the efficacy of arthroscopic surgery for discoid meniscus injuries. Experimental results show that Ikeuchi's assessment of the excellent and good rate of arthroscopic knee joints was significantly higher than that of the control group, the incidence of postoperative pain was significantly lower than that of the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Postoperative pain and premature weight-bearing of discoid meniscus injury of knee joint, factors such as noncold compress after operation, articular cartilage damage, age, and time from onset to operation are closely related; the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). Postoperative evaluation according to Ikeuchi score: excellent in 38 cases, good in 14 cases, 8 cases were poor, and the excellent and good rate was 86.7%. The patient's age, type of meniscus tear, and duration of symptoms have a certain impact on the postoperative clinical efficacy of discoid meniscus injury; BMI and surgical methods have no significant impact. Logistic regression analysis results show that postoperative pain and premature weight-bearing of discoid meniscus injury of the knee joint, no cold compress after operation, accompanied by articular cartilage damage, age, and factors such as onset to operation time are closely related; the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). It proves that arthroscopic surgery for discoid meniscus injury has the advantages of less damage and faster recovery, it is the first choice for the treatment of discoid meniscus injury, and the postoperative effect is significant in young patients and those with short duration of symptoms; mixed tears have a greater impact on the postoperative recovery of patients with discoid meniscus injury; therefore, patients with discoid meniscus injury should undergo surgery as soon as possible and perform active rehabilitation exercises after the operation.