Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Enhance Brain Activity: Applicability for Schizophrenia

CONFERENCE REPORTER

Imagine a microphone dropped into a football stadium. The sounds waves would be bumpy, chaotic. This is the brain during wakefulness.

Now imagine that same microphone responding to a wave rippling across fans in the stand. The sound waves are more synchronized. This is the brain during healthy sleep in typically functioning individuals.

Tony Cunningham, PhD, shared this analogy and more at the 2026 SLEEP Annual Meeting. Cunningham and his lab have developed methods to analyze sleep stages using spectral analysis. For clinical applications, they use transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) to enhance brain activity, particularly in groups like patients with schizophrenia. Cunningham's team is also exploring transcranial temporal interference to provide more targeted stimulation for better cognitive and clinical outcomes.

Sleep disturbances and cognitive deficits are often seen in patients with schizophrenia. High-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) offers a noninvasive approach to modulate restorative sleep and sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Additionally, it could potentially help address cognitive impairments that are not targeted by pharmacological treatments.¹

Dr Cunningham is an assistant professor and the director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition and the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Clinic in the Psychiatry Department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School.

Reference

1. Song SH, Chang J, Kader N, et al. Neuromodulation-powered naps: boosting sleep’s restorative potential. Sleep. 2026;49(Suppl 1):A506.