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Abstract
The goal of the present study was to examine possible effects of right median nerve stimulation (RMNS) on memory in patients in a relatively early stage of probable Alzheimer's disease (AD). Seventeen AD patients were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 8) and a control group (n = 9) and treated with RMNS and sham RMNS, respectively, for 30 min a day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks. Neuropsychological tests were used to assess memory processes. The results show that the various aspects of memory did not respond positively to RMNS. A study with a much longer treatment period is suggested before firm conclusions about the ineffectiveness of RMNS on memory in AD can be drawn.
The authors are grateful to Fontis Amsterdam for the financial support of the study.
Notes
Note. MMSE: Mini-Mental State Examination.
Note. CVLT: California Verbal Learning Test.
a t tests for possible differences in pretreatment scores (pre) between the experimental and control groups.
∗Scores of patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) on the various neuropsychological tests are provided as a reference (Scherder et al., Citation2005)
Note. CVLT: California Verbal Learning Test.
N∗ = Number of patients necessary to reach the level of significance: p < .006; only calculated for those tests of which the post-treatment scores were in the expected direction, i.e., a higher mean score in the experimental group and an unchanged or lower score in the control group.
Note. CVLT: California Verbal Learning Test.