Brain Stimulation Journal

The Brain Stimulation journal has a variety of original research that pertains to the field of neuromodulation. It looks like they have had only four issues since January 2008 so it is fairly infrequently updated. I just noticed the relatively recent October issue of the journal. One paper in this October issue discusses the prospects of brain stimulation for cognitive neurorehabilitation. There are plenty of brain injury disorders that could potentially be improved upon with these brain stimulation techniques. I'm not too sure if the brain stimulation methods will have a lot of utility for brain injuries, but perhaps they will be of some value. Here's an excerpt from the abstract.

Cognitive deficits are a common consequence of neurologic disease, in particular, of traumatic brain injury, stroke, and neurodegenerative disorders, and there is evidence that specific cognitive training may be effective in cognitive rehabilitation. Several investigations emphasize the fact that interacting with cortical activity, by means of cortical stimulation, can positively affect the short-term cognitive performance and improve the rehabilitation potential of neurologic patients. In this respect, preliminary evidence suggests that cortical stimulation may play a role in treating aphasia, unilateral neglect, and other cognitive disorders.

Another paper is about using brain stimulation techniques to treat chronic pain.

Noninvasive stimulation techniques, such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may be suitable to treat chronic pain as they can act on these networks by modulating neural activities not only in the stimulated area, but also in remote regions that are interconnected to the site of stimulation

Here is an interesting abstract about the controversy of these brain stimulation techniques when treating stroke. Apparently there is some publication bias as negative reports are less likely to be published. This may be true of brain stimulation for other disorders as well. Similar to what has happened for antidepressants.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and epidural electrical stimulation have been used in first trials on small cohorts of stroke patients. Effect sizes in the order of 8% to 30% of functional improvement have been reported, but a publication bias toward presenting “promising” but not negative results is likely. Many questions regarding underlying mechanisms, optimal stimulation parameters, combination with other types of interventions, among others, are open. This review addresses six controversies related to the experimental application of brain stimulation techniques to stroke patients.

Most of the articles are behind a wall, but it looks like you can register for free and get access to select full-text papers.