The Effect of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Decision Making and Cognitive Flexibility in Gambling Disorder

March 18, 2018 updated by: Ahmet Zihni Soyata, Istanbul University

The investigators conducted a double-blind randomised sham-controlled study. Upon enrollment into the study, participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (i) active group: anodal stimulation over the right dlPFC (n = 10) or (ii) sham stimulation group (n = 10). Participants and raters were blinded to the condition.

Subsequently, the participants were administered the IGT and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test by a trained neuropsychologist in a quiet laboratory. A computerized version of standard IGT was used. The order of the tasks performed in a single session was randomised.

After the psychiatric and neurocognitive assessment, participants received three sessions of 20-minute active or sham anodal tDCS (once a day, every other day).

Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and a modified version of Iowa Gambling Test were readministered after the last application. The order of the tasks was randomized again. A brief questionnaire on study blinding was also administered. Safety was assessed through open-ended questions based on the tDCS adverse events questionnaire

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

20

Phase

  • Phase 3

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

      • Istanbul, Turkey, 34093
        • Ahmet Zihni Soyata

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years to 65 years (ADULT, OLDER_ADULT)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

Male

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Participants meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) criteria for gambling disorder
  • Being right-handed
  • Being 18-65 years old
  • Being drug-free

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Current DSM-5 diagnosis of major depressive disorder
  • Current or previous DSM-5 diagnosis of alcohol and substance use disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or other psychotic disorder
  • Drug Use in the past 4 weeks of any medication with known pro-convulsant action or current regular use of any psychotropic medications (benzodiazepines, antipsychotic medications, tricyclic antidepressants, anti-epileptics, mood stabilizers)
  • Any history of any clinically significant neurological disorder, including organic brain disease, epilepsy, stroke, brain lesions, multiple sclerosis, previous neurosurgery, or personal history of head trauma that resulted in loss of consciousness for > 5 minutes and retrograde amnesia for > 30 minutes,
  • The presence of mental retardation diagnosis (previously identified)
  • Any personal or family history (1st degree relatives) of seizures other than febrile childhood seizures
  • Illiteracy, deficient language or refusal to participate.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: TREATMENT
  • Allocation: RANDOMIZED
  • Interventional Model: PARALLEL
  • Masking: DOUBLE

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
ACTIVE_COMPARATOR: Active
anodal stimulation over the right dlPFC
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a safe method for non-invasively modulating cortical excitability through the use of weak electrical currents (usually of 1-2 mA) circulating between two scalp electrodes (i.e., an anode and a cathode) placed over the target cortical regions. The effects of tDCS on brain activity are polarity-dependent, such that anodal stimulation generally enhances cortical excitability by depolarizing cell membranes and increasing neuronal firing rates, while cathodal stimulation generally results in the opposite effect. Because of its neural effects, tDCS has been increasingly used to gauge the functional relationship between cognitive/behavioural dimensions and putatively relevant neurocircuitry
PLACEBO_COMPARATOR: Sham
sham stimulation over the right dlPFC
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a safe method for non-invasively modulating cortical excitability through the use of weak electrical currents (usually of 1-2 mA) circulating between two scalp electrodes (i.e., an anode and a cathode) placed over the target cortical regions. The effects of tDCS on brain activity are polarity-dependent, such that anodal stimulation generally enhances cortical excitability by depolarizing cell membranes and increasing neuronal firing rates, while cathodal stimulation generally results in the opposite effect. Because of its neural effects, tDCS has been increasingly used to gauge the functional relationship between cognitive/behavioural dimensions and putatively relevant neurocircuitry

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Changes in the Iowa Gambling Task net score
Time Frame: Baseline, after tDCS treatment
Iowa Gambling Task net score is the total score of the task (between -100 and 100) that generally assesses the decision making under ambiguity, but also assesses the decision making under risk at the later stages. Higher scores in the task represents better decision making and healthy people generally have scores above 8-10 in the task.
Baseline, after tDCS treatment
Changes in the number of perseverative errors in Wisconsin Card Sorting Task
Time Frame: Baseline, after tDCS treatment
Wisconsin Card Sorting Task is the widely used task to assess frontal lobe functions such as cognitive flexibility, set shifting and abstraction abilities. The participants were required to match response cards to 4 stimulus cards along 1 of 3 dimensions (colour, form or number) on the basis of verbal feedback (correct or incorrect). The participants were not given any information about the dimensions. After sorting a series of 10 cards in 1 category, participants were asked to sort the cards in a different category. The number of perseverative errors in Wisconsin Card Sorting Task is the most robust variable of the task to assess cognitive flexibility. Higher scores show an impairment of cognitive flexibility
Baseline, after tDCS treatment

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Ahmet Z Soyata, resident

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (ACTUAL)

March 29, 2017

Primary Completion (ACTUAL)

November 20, 2017

Study Completion (ACTUAL)

November 20, 2017

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

March 13, 2018

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 18, 2018

First Posted (ACTUAL)

March 26, 2018

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (ACTUAL)

March 26, 2018

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 18, 2018

Last Verified

March 1, 2018

More Information

Terms related to this study

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 71146310-511.06-E368557

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

UNDECIDED

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

Clinical Trials on Gambling Disorder

Clinical Trials on Transcranial direct current stimulation

3
Subscribe