Feasibility of Home-based tES for Older Adults at Risk of Falling

In older adults, falls are costly, consequential and correlated with both physical and cognitive decline. Most falls occur when standing or walking, especially when completing these tasks in complex environments or while simultaneously performing additional cognitive tasks. To this end, older adults with worse cognitive "executive" function have worse mobility and are more likely to fall. Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (tES), which includes both transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) and transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS), holds promise as a therapy to improve dual task standing and walking and other "high-level" aspects of mobility in older adults. tES is a low cost technique, is very safe with only minimal side effects, is portable and is very easy to administer. However, tES must be administered numerous times per week for several consecutive weeks in order to induce lasting therapeutic benefit. As each tES session must currently be administered in clinical or laboratory settings, such interventions are not currently available to many older adults--especially those who 1) live far away from the clinical/laboratory, and/or 2) have physical and/or cognitive limitations that make it difficult to organize and utilize transportation.