Neuropsychology
Foad Niknasab; Fazlollah Bagherzadeh; Mahmoud Sheikh; Ali Moghadamzadeh; Davoud Hominian
Abstract
Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) display slowness, inaccuracy, and insufficient coordination in the performance of motor skills. Compared to children with normal development, they generally have poorer performance in tasks that require visual-motor integration. We evaluated the ...
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Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) display slowness, inaccuracy, and insufficient coordination in the performance of motor skills. Compared to children with normal development, they generally have poorer performance in tasks that require visual-motor integration. We evaluated the effect of tDCS stimulation on visual-motor integration in children with DCD. In this quasi-experimental study, featuring a pre-test-post-test design, 40 students with DCD aged 7-10 years were selected according to the inclusion criteria and randomly assigned into two groups: tDCS stimulation and artificial stimulation. In the pre-test, participants took a visual-motor integration test. The intervention phase was administered for 5 consecutive days. Each day, the subjects underwent either electrical stimulation in the motor cortex (anode at C3 and cathode at Fp2) or artificial stimulation. The post-test was administered in the last session. Short-term and long-term follow-ups were performed 1 day and 42 days after the post-test, respectively. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyze the data. The results showed that electrical stimulation of the motor cortex significantly improves the visual-motor integration of children with DCD. The follow-up results supported the persistence of motor-visual integration in these children. In general, the results emphasized the effectiveness of tDCS exercises on motor-visual integration in children with DCD.
