Targeting the insula with transcranial direct current stimulation; A simulation study

Negin Esmaeilzadeh Kiabani; Reza Kazemi; Abed L Hadipour; Sanaz Khomami; Benjamin Kalloch; Mario Hlawitschka

doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2023.111718

Targeting the insula with transcranial direct current stimulation; A simulation study

Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging. 2023 Oct:335:111718. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2023.111718. Epub 2023 Sep 15.

Authors

Negin Esmaeilzadeh Kiabani¹, Reza Kazemi², Abed L Hadipour³, Sanaz Khomami⁴, Benjamin Kalloch⁵, Mario Hlawitschka⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.
² Faculty of Entrepreneurship, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. Electronic address: rezakazemi@ut.ac.ir.
³ Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of Messina, Messina, Italy.
⁴ Department of Psychology, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
⁵ Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Instiute of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, Germany & Technische Universität Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Leipzig, Germany.
⁶ Faculty of Computer Science and Media, Leipzig University of Applied Science, Leipzig, Germany.

PMID: 37738706
DOI: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2023.111718

Abstract

Insula is considered an important region of the brain in the generation and maintenance of a wide range of psychiatric symptoms, possibly due to being key in fundamental functions such as interoception and cognition in general. Investigating the possibility of targeting this area using non-invasive brain stimulation techniques can open new possibilities to probe the normal and abnormal functioning of the brain and potentially new treatment protocols to alleviate symptoms of different psychiatric disorders. In the current study, COMETS2, a MATLAB based toolbox was used to simulate the magnitude of the current density and electric field in the brain caused by different transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) protocols to find an optimum montage to target the insula and its 6 subregions for three different current intensities, namely 2, 3, and 4 mA. Frontal and occipital regions were found to be optimal candidate regions.. The results of the current study showed that it is viable to reach the insula and its individual subregions using tDCS.

Keywords: Insula; Insular Cortex; Psychiatric disorders; Simulation; Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation; tDCS.

MeSH terms

Brain / physiology
Cognition
Computer Simulation
Humans
Mental Disorders*
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation* / methods