Facilitative Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Semantic Memory Examined by Text-Mining Analysis in Patients With Schizophrenia

Abstract

Background: Beneficial effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) are relevant to cognition and functional capacity, in addition to psychiatric symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. However, whether tDCS would improve higher-order cognition, e.g., semantic memory organization, has remained unclear. Recently, text-mining analyses have been shown to reveal semantic memory. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether tDCS would improve semantic memory, as evaluated by text-mining analyses of category fluency data, in patients with schizophrenia. Methods: Twenty-eight patients entered the study. Cognitive assessment including the category fluency task was conducted at baseline (before tDCS treatment) and 1 month after t administration of tDCS (2 mA × 20 min, twice per day) for 5 days, according to our previous study. The category fluency data were also obtained from 335 healthy control subjects. The verbal outputs (i.e., animal names) from the category fluency task were submitted to singular valued decomposition (SVD) analysis. Semantic memory structures were estimated by calculating inter-item cosines (i.e., similarities) among animal names frequently produced in the category fluency task. Data were analyzed longitudinally and cross-sectionally to compare the semantic structure within the patient group (i.e., baseline vs. follow-up) and between groups (patients vs. healthy controls). In the former, semantic associations for frequent items were compared in the form of cosine profiles, while in the latter, the difference in the magnitude of the correlations for inter-item cosines between healthy controls and patients (baseline, follow-up) was examined. Results: Cosine profiles in the patient group became more cluster-based (i.e., pet, carnivores, and herbivores) at follow-up compared to those at baseline, yielding higher cosines within subcategories. The correlational coefficient of inter-item cosines between healthy controls and patients was significantly greater at follow-up compared to baseline; semantic associations in patients approached the normality status after multi-session tDCS. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate the facilitative effect of tDCS on semantic memory organization in patients with schizophrenia. Text-mining analysis was indicated to effectively evaluate semantic memory structures in patients with psychiatric disorders.