Experimental Histological Evidence of the Safety of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation as a Therapeutic Procedure

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a type of electrical modulation of the nervous system activity which involves the uses of low current to stimulate specified areas of the brain using electrodes to the scalp. This study was carried out to investigate if tDCS which is being used in the treatment of various disorders of the brain could have any possible side effects that might be worse than the treated disorder or any effects of tDCS on the cytoarchitecture of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. A total of 32 adult male Wistar rats were used and were placed into 5 groups (A-E). Rats in group A were divided into two groups A (SHAM) (tDCS for 30seconds) and A (N-SHAM). Rats in groups B, C, D and E were stimulated for 5, 10, 15, and 20 minutes with 12Volt respectively for the duration of 14 days and the animals were euthanized on the last day of the experiment two hours post brain stimulation. The specimen were subjected to gross morphological analysis and basic demonstration of the DLPFC using H & E and special stains. There was no significant difference in the neuronal structure and the supporting cells of the brain across the groups A (SHAM), B (5MINS), C (10MINS), D (15MINS), E (20MINS) when compared with control group A (N-SHAM) which suggest that tDCS does not have any neurodegenerative effects and could be safe in its use as neuro-stimulator to enhance cognitive ability in healthy individuals