Effect of home-based transcranial direct current stimulation combined with nutritional counseling therapy on binge...

To examine the effect of nutritional counseling therapy (NCT) combined with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on binge eating disorder (BED) symptoms.

Forty women with BED were randomly allocated (2:2:2 ratio) to one of the following groups: active tDCS (a-tDCS), NCT, sham tDCS (s-tDCS) with NCT, and a-tDCS with NCT. Home-based tDCS was applied to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for 28 sessions.

A mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed no main effect between groups nor a time × group interaction. However, a significant main effect was found for time on the primary outcome Binge Eating Scale (BES) (p = 0.001; eta2p = 0.325), which tended to decrease during treatment and follow-up. A significant main effect was found for the secondary outcome short-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI) (p = 0.02; eta2p = 0.112), a measure of inhibitory function, which increased from baseline to the final period in the a-tDCS group, without significant differences between groups.

Combined NCT and tDCS did not have a synergistic effect on BED symptoms. Nevertheless, the data from this pilot study should help plan future larger-scale studies investigating the effects of tDCS and behavioral interventions in the promising area of BED treatment.