Modulating somatosensory alpha oscillations using short-period transcranial alternating current stimulation

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) appears to modulate neuronal oscillations at the frequency of stimulation. Longer periods of stimulation with tACS (10-40 min) have shown to produce persistent changes, especially in alpha power (~8-12 Hz), whereas the efficacy of shorter periods of tACS (1-8 s) is less known. Thus, we investigated whether short periods of tACS applied to the somatosensory cortex elicit changes in alpha power following stimulation. With this aim, during simultaneous acquisition of MEG, we administered tACS and control (no-tACS) on separate days. We applied short trains of stimulation for durations of 10 s and 30 s at an individually adapted stimulation frequency (ISF). Each stimulation train was followed by a 15 s interval. We calculated power changes in the post-stimulation intervals, relative to a baseline period, and the resulting Δpower was used to statistically test the difference between tACS and control conditions. We found significant elevations in power at ISF following tACS compared with control. The extent of this effect spanned bilaterally over the somatosensory and frontal regions. While the observed increase in power was most prominent around ISF (i.e., in the alpha band), power modulations were also observed in the beta-band. When comparing the two stimulation durations, 10 s of tACS produced greater increases in power (at ISF) than 30 s of tACS. This study validates that 10 s of tACS produces robust elevations of power in the somatosensory cortex at ISF, thereby establishing its potential for use in future studies.