Background Prolonged disorders of consciousness (pDoC) are conditions with impaired consciousness lasting over 28 days, including coma, vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS), and minimally conscious state (MCS). Existing treatments offer limited benefit. Although thalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS) has shown potential to improve cognitive and behavioral function, its invasiveness limits clinical use. Transcranial temporal interference stimulation (TIS)—a noninvasive method using dual slightly different frequency currents to target deep brain regions, offers a potential alternative. We therefore conducted a clinical trial to explore the feasibility and potential effects of bilateral thalamic TIS in a patient with pDoC. Case presentation A 40-year-old male patient experienced sudden cardiac arrest (CA) while playing basketball. Cranial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed abnormal signal changes in the bilateral caudate nuclei, putamen, and thalamus, consistent with ischemic–hypoxic brain injury secondary to CA. At the time of study enrollment, the patient had a Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) score of 4, indicating an early stage of the VS/UWS. Bilateral transcranial TIS targeting the thalamus was administered for 8 weeks, during which behavioral, neurophysiological, and imaging outcomes were systematically assessed. Improvements in CRS-R scores, alterations in EEG spectral power, and structural changes were observed over the intervention period. Conclusion This study provides preliminary evidence supporting the feasibility of thalamus-targeted TIS in a patient with pDoC, representing an initial step toward clinical translation and further investigation of TIS in disorders of consciousness (DoC) neurorehabilitation. Our findings suggest that thalamic TIS may be associated with improved consciousness in this VS/UWS patient and highlights the need for future hypothesis-testing studies to establish its therapeutic potential.
Peng et al. (Wed,) studied this question.