Effects of Transcranial Pulsed Current Stimulation on Fatigue and Local Blood Flow in Cerebral Cortex after Different Training Tasks

Objective: To investigate the effect of transcranial pulsed current stimulation(tPCS) on sensation of athletes' fatigue and ROI blood flow in cerebral cortex after completing physical tasks, cognitive tasks and mixed tasks. Methods: 24 college athletes were randomly divided into active stimulation group(current intensity: 1.5 mA, duration: 15 min) and shame stimulation group, the questionnaire were conducted before and after stimulation to collect mental fatigue and fNIRS data. Results: The RPE results of the active stimulation group were significantly better than those of the shame stimulation group(P<0.05). In the active stimulation group, the channels were significantly activated after physical training were ch3, ch5 and ch8, and ch2, ch6, ch9, ch10, ch14, ch18,ch21 were activated after cognitive training, and ch1, ch2, ch6, ch12, ch13, ch17, ch22 were activated after mixed training.Conclusions: tPCS can effectively reduce the subjective evaluation of fatigue, and it can selectively increase the cerebral blood oxygen flow in task related areas. Specifically, tPCS can significantly activate the cerebral motor cortex after physical task; after cognitive task, tPCS can significantly activate the frontal polar area, Broca pars triangularis area and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.In addition, it can significantly activate the cerebral somatosensory cortex, motor cortex, supplementary motor area and prefrontal cortex after mixed task.