Abstract
The number of patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as chronic pain, Parkinson\'92s and Alzheimer diseases, depression, has increased over the past decade, representing a prominent health problem worldwide. While pharmacological therapies can improve symptoms in some patients, individuals often experience adverse effects and can develop tolerance to medications whereby they become less effective. In such cases, non-invasive, low intensity transcranial brain stimulation (tES) of the neural circuitry related to the given disorder represents a promising treatment modality. TES acts on both the grey and white matter to modulate neural activity by delivering electric energy to targeted areas using specific temporal and spatial patterns. Although tES has been used with some success for over 20 years in the clinical practice, it suffers from time-intensive trial-and-error parameter refinement and highly variable outcomes in patients. Computational simulations are increasingly being used to model the interaction between electric stimulation, neural anatomy, and endogenous brain dynamics in order to understand the mechanisms of stimulation, but there is still so much work ahead. Combining brain stimulation with brain imaging, individualizing stimulation protocols, predicting treatment response, identifying biomarkers are representing important and thriving developments currently worked on in many labs worldwide. The aim of the present lecture is to shortly summarize these developments, targeting transcranial direct and alternating current stimulation.