Effect of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on the Mismatch Negativity Features of Deviated Stimuli in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Changcheng Sun; Zhuoyue Zhao; Longlong Cheng; Rong Tian; Wenchang Zhao; Jingang Du; Ying Zhang; Chunfang Wang

doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.721987

Effect of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on the Mismatch Negativity Features of Deviated Stimuli in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Front Neurosci. 2022 Feb 9:16:721987. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.721987. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Changcheng Sun^{1

2}, Zhuoyue Zhao², Longlong Cheng³, Rong Tian², Wenchang Zhao², Jingang Du², Ying Zhang², Chunfang Wang²

Affiliations

¹ Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
² Department of Rehabilitation Medical, Tianjin Union Medical Centre, Tianjin, China.
³ China Electronics Cloud Brain (Tianjin) Technology Co., Ltd., Tianjin, China.

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a devastating mental disorder in children. Currently, there is no effective treatment for ASD. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which is a non-invasive brain stimulation neuromodulation technology, is a promising method for the treatment of ASD. However, the manner in which tDCS changes the electrophysiological process in the brain is still unclear. In this study, we used tDCS to stimulate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex area of children with ASD (one group received anode tDCS, and the other received sham tDCS) and investigated the changes in evoked EEG signals and behavioral abilities before and after anode and sham stimulations. In addition to tDCS, all patients received conventional rehabilitation treatment. Results show that although conventional treatment can effectively improve the behavioral ability of children with ASD, the use of anode tDCS with conventional rehabilitation can boost this improvement, thus leading to increased treatment efficacy. By analyzing the electroencephalography pre- and post-treatment, we noticed a decrease in the mismatch negativity (MMN) latency and an increase in the MMN amplitude in both groups, these features are considered similar to MMN features from healthy children. However, no statistical difference between the two groups was observed after 4 weeks of treatment. In addition, the MMN features correlate well with the aberrant behavior checklist (ABC) scale, particularly the amplitude of MMN, thus suggesting the feasibility of using MMN features to assess the behavioral ability of children with ASD.

Keywords: EEG; autism spectrum disorder (ASD); dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC); mismatch negativity (MMN); transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).