RESEARCH PAPER
Effect of transcranial direct current stimulation on dichotic listening test results in children with disorders of psychological development
 
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1
City Centre of Rehabilitation Treatment for Children with Psychoneurological Disabilities, Saint Petersburg, Russia
 
2
Saint-Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
 
3
Saint Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of RAS, Saint Petersburg, Russia
 
4
Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
 
5
Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint Petersburg, Russia
 
 
Submission date: 2015-02-24
 
 
Acceptance date: 2015-05-04
 
 
Online publication date: 2015-07-07
 
 
Publication date: 2020-03-26
 
 
Corresponding author
Evgeny L. Wasserman   

St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 14 line 39, St. Petersburg 199178, Russia. Tel.: +7 8123214467.
 
 
Pol. Ann. Med. 2015;22(2):67-73
 
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
Introduction:
We use dichotic listening (DL) test to assess functional brain asymmetry when we treat children with disorders of psychological development (DPD) by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

Aim:
In this work we carry out retrospective analysis of children with DPD and study the influence of tDCS on auditory verbal stimuli perception characteristics obtained by DL tests.

Material and methods:
We analyzed the DL test results of 6–13-year-old children; 26 children with specific developmental disorders of scholastic skills (SDDSS), 31 children with specific developmental disorders of speech and language (SDDSL), and 39 healthy children were tested. Some of the children with DPD (21 children) were tested only once, 26 – before and after tDCS, and 10 – before and after the treatment without tDCS. In all cases we estimated laterality indices (LI) and the amounts of ‘‘erroneous’’ answers (ErrA).

Results and discussion:
In the DPD group before the treatment the LI values were lower and the ErrA values were higher in comparison to the values of healthy children; the differences were more significant in the SDDSL than in the SDDSS subgroup. In the SDDSL subgroup after tDCS the LI values got closer to those of the healthy children, and the ErrA values decreased. The LI and ErrA values of children who had not received tDCS treatment did not change.

Conclusions:
The DL test reveals the characteristics of brain asymmetry in case of DPD, and can be useful when planning tDCS treatment and estimating its effectiveness.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST
None declared.
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