Effect of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Professional Female Soccer Players’ Recovery Following Official Matches

• Published in: Perceptual and motor skills Vol. 128; no. 4; pp. 1504 - 1529
• Main Authors: Moreira, Alexandre, Machado, Daniel Gomes da Silva, Bikson, Marom, Unal, Gozde, Bradley, Paul S., Moscaleski, Luciane, Costa, Taline, Kalil, Gabriella C .S. G., Chao, Liaw W., Baptista, Abrahão F., Morya, Edgard, Okano, Alexandre H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-08-2021; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Recovery (Medical); Soccer; neuromodulation; fatigue; team-sports; non-invasive brain stimulation; sport psychology
• ISSN: 0031-5125; 1558-688X
• DOI: 10.1177/00315125211021239

This study investigated the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) combined with a recovery training session on the well-being and self-perceived recovery of professional female soccer players after official matches. Data from 13 world-class players were analyzed after participating in four official soccer matches of the first division of the Brazilian Women’s Soccer Championship (7-, 10-, and 13-day intervals). We applied anodal tDCS (a-tDCS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with 2 mA for 20 minutes (+F3/−F4 montage) the day after each match. Participants underwent two randomly ordered sessions of a-tDCS or sham. Players completed the Well-Being Questionnaire (WBQ) and the Total Quality Recovery (TQR) scale before each experimental condition and again the following morning. A two-way repeated-measures ANOVA showed a significant time x condition interaction on the WBQ (F(1,11)=5.21; p=0.043; ηp2=0.32), but not on the TQR (F(1,12) = 0.552; p = 0.47; ηp2 = 0.044). There was a large effect size (ES) for a-tDCS for the WBQ score (ES = 1.02; 95%CI = 0.17;1.88), and there was a moderate WBQ score increase (ES = 0.53; 95%CI = −0.29;1.34) for the sham condition. We found similar increases in the TQR score for a-tDCS (ES = 1.50; 95%CI = 0.63–2.37) and the sham condition (ES = 1.36; 95%CI = 0.51–2.22). These results suggest that a-tDCS (+F3/−F4 montage) combined with a recovery training session may slightly improve perceived well-being beyond the level of improvement after only the recovery training session among world-class female soccer players. Prior to widely adopting this recovery approach, further study is needed with larger and more diverse samples, including for female teams of different performance levels.