Study current therapy for fatigue

A slight electrical stimulation of the brain reduces the need for sleep. This has now been proven by researchers from Freiburg. They performed transcranial DC stimulation in healthy volunteers, passing a very weak current through the skull. The treatment reduced the need for sleep by 25 minutes on average.

In the subjects, the DC stimulation has significantly reduced the need for sleep, without negative effects on concentration, alertness and memory formation have occurred. The basis for making people feel awake and well-rested is the well balanced ability to activate the brain. This is controlled by so-called arousal processes in the brain and can be measured with an electroencephalogram.

Electricity therapy dispels fatigue. Picture: Köpenicker - fotolia

In patients with Parkinson's, chronic depression and brain damage, such as after a stroke, these arousal processes are often reduced, which can result in an extremely large need for sleep. In many patients, current therapies, such as activation programs and medications, do not lead to a sufficient improvement. For these patients, electrostimulation could be an effective and well-tolerated treatment in the future, the researchers said.

On average, pacing resulted in a 25-minute reduction in the total sleep duration of the study (sleep duration after stimulation: 387 minutes, without stimulation: 412 minutes) in 19 subjects. Neither in psychological tests nor in their self-assessment, the subjects showed a difference to comparators. Even the sleep architecture, ie the composition of light, deep and REM sleep, which is important for the nightly processing of information, remained unchanged. More information can be found here.