A Digital System for Evaluating the Effect of tDCS on Laparoscopic Surgical Skill Acquisition

Abstract

Background: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a powerful non-invasive brain stimulation technique, which can be used in treatment of wide variety of psychological and physical disorders. It is still a vast field to explore, as there are a number of different variations in protocol with variety of different effects. Objective: There were two objectives of the study. First was to design a digital laparoscopic trainer. Second objective was to evaluate the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation on laparoscopic peg transfer task being performed on the designed digital trainer. Methodology: A digital trainer was designed using Arduino Uno microcontroller and optical sensors as bead detectors. Trainer has the ability to detect 144 beads. For tDCS study, a double blind crossover study design was selected for experiment in which each subject underwent both Active and Sham treatment. The treatments were separated by a period of 48 hours. Subject completed the laparoscopic peg transfer task in 3 sessions on both treatment days with one session being baseline and other session was post-tDCS. Results: Repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant different in baseline (active) and active tDCS session with p=0.002. However, contrary to expected results sham tDCS session was also significantly different from its baseline with p=0.01. Conclusion: This study suggests that tDCS may play a role in performance enhancement of a peg transfer task when applied over M1 region contralateral to dominant hand however the results may be task specific to the type of task used in the study.