SynthesisFrontiers in psychiatry2021
The Effects of Transcranial Electrical Stimulation of the Brain on Sleep: A Systematic Review.
Synthesis in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Transcranial alternating current stimulation for chronic insomnia: a meta-analytic evaluation of sleep restoration and safety in adults.BMC psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Prophylactic Effect of Prefrontal Alternating Current Stimulation on Postoperative Sleep Disturbance in Patients Undergoing Gynecological Laparoscope: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Sham-Controlled Trial.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2025Trial
- Medial parietal alpha-frequency transcranial alternating current stimulation for chronic insomnia: a randomized sham-controlled trial.Psychological medicine · 2025Trial
- Transcranial random noise stimulation combined with cognitive training for treating ADHD: a randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial.Translational psychiatry · 2023Trial
- At-home limbic-targeted transcranial electrical stimulation during sleep: a feasibility study in healthy adults.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Sleep circuit modulation: from animal models to human translation.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2026Review
- From Therapeutic Heterogeneity to Precision Neuromodulation: Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation for Chronic Insomnia.Nature and science of sleep · 2026Review
- Emerging neurotechnological approaches to management of sleep disturbances in Parkinson's disease.Clinical parkinsonism & related disorders · 2026Review
- Article
- The Future of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation in Sleep Medicine.Journal of sleep research · 2025Review
- Review
- Impact of neuromodulation on excessive daytime sleepiness: a narrative review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Review
- Acoustic stimulation and other emerging approaches to enhance sleep: design notes for the next generation of closed-loop neurostimulation technology.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Review
- Exploring the synchronization of cortical networks via entrainment to intrinsic frequencies.Heliyon · 2024Article
- The new science of sleep: From cells to large-scale societies.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- The Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) in HIV Patients-A Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
- A classification-based generative approach to selective targeting of global slow oscillations during sleep.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Article
- Applications for oral research in microgravity - lessons learned from burning mouth syndrome and ageing studies.Journal of medicine and life · 2023Review
- Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Sleep in Athletes: A Protocol of a Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Personalized transcranial alternating current stimulation improves sleep quality: Initial findings.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (tES) is a promising non-invasive brain modulation tool. Over the past years, there have been several attempts to modulate sleep with tES-based approaches in both the healthy and pathological brains. However, data about the impact on measurable aspects of sleep remain scattered between studies, which prevent us from drawing firm conclusions. We conducted a systematic review of studies that explored the impact of tES on neurophysiological sleep oscillations, sleep patterns measured objectively with polysomnography, and subjective psychometric assessments of sleep in both healthy and clinical samples. We searched four main electronic databases to identify studies until February 2020. Forty studies were selected including 511 healthy participants and 452 patients. tES can modify endogenous brain oscillations during sleep. Results concerning changes in sleep patterns are conflicting, whereas subjective assessments show clear improvements after tES. Possible stimulation-induced mechanisms within specific cortico-subcortical sleep structures and networks are discussed. Although these findings cannot be directly transferred to the clinical practice and sleep-enhancing devices development for healthy populations, they might help to pave the way for future researches in these areas. PROSPERO registration number 178910.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.