Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation alleviates cognitive impairment in an APP/PS1 model of Alzheimer’s disease in the preclinical stage

Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation(AtDCS)has been shown to alleviate cognitive impairment in an APP/PS1 model of Alzheimer’s disease in the preclinical stage.However,this enhancement was only observed immediately after AtDCS,and the long-term effect of AtDCS remains unknown.In this study,we treated 26-week-old mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease in the preclinical stage with 10 AtDCS sessions or sham stimulation.The Morris water maze,novel object recognition task,and novel object location test were implemented to evaluate spatial learning memory and recognition memory of mice.Western blotting was used to detect the relevant protein content.Morphological changes were observed using immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence staining.Six weeks after treatment,the mice subjected to AtDCS sessions had a shorter escape latency,a shorter path length,more platform area crossings,and spent more time in the target quadrant than sham-stimulated mice.The mice subjected to AtDCS sessions also performed better in the novel object recognition and novel object location tests than sham-stimulated mice.Furthermore,AtDCS reduced the levels of amyloid-β42 and glial fibrillary acidic protein,a marker of astrocyte activation,and increased the level of neuronal marker NeuN in hippocampal tissue.These findings suggest that AtDCS can improve the spatial learning and memory abilities and pathological state of an APP/PS1 mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease in the preclinical stage,with improvements that last for at least 6 weeks.

Design of a virtual reality rehabilitation system for upper limbs that inhibits compensatory movement

Stroke is currently the main cause of death and disability among the elderly in our country.According to medical research,a considerable number of patients with physical disabilities can be recovered through rehabilitation training.However,traditional motor rehabilitation is a continuous,repeated and slow process,and patients tend to feel bored and lose motivation for training.In this paper,we developed a virtual reality rehabilitation system based on Kinect,which is a vision capture sensor,for patients with movement disorders who are at or above Brunnstrom Stage III and have certain motor ability.Through the management platform of the system,physician can obtain the patient's personal information,formulate and adjust the training plan.Patients can control the role in the virtual scene through Kinect sensor,and complete the training action according to the guidance.The system collects the user's motion data in real time and detect the compensation.The system will adaptively evolve to guide the patient to self-correct the compensatory patterns.After the training,the system will evaluate the patients based on the their training performance.Two experiments are also carried out to verify the accuracy of the range of motion and the effectiveness of virtual guidance.It is proved that the virtual reality upper limb rehabilitation training system studied in this paper is reliable,stable,and can guide users to complete the training action and improve the rehabilitation effect.