Development of Point of Care Testing Device for Neurovascular Coupling from Simultaneous Recording of EEG and NIRS During Anodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

This paper presents a point-of-care testing device for bedside measurement of cerebral blood flow and cerebrovascular reserve. The device detects neurovascular coupling (NVC) from simultaneous recording of electroencephalogram and near infra red spectroscopy during anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Studies in healthy subjects and stroke survivors demonstrate the feasibility of this technique and show that anodal tDCS can perturb local neural and vascular activity (via NVC) which can be used for assessing regional cerebral microvessel functionality where confirmatory clinical studies are required in small vessel diseases.
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