Sham tDCS Controls: Blinding Integrity and Reliability Evidence Synthesis

A PDF document synthesizing evidence on sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) controls from January 1, 2010, to August 31, 2024, with a targeted update through September 2025. Authored by Milos Ljubisavljevic and shared on figshare under a CC-BY-4.0 license, it reviews blinding integrity and test–retest reliability. The document proposes five specification-grade recommendations to improve sham quality in mechanistic and clinical research.

Use Cases

• Designing sham protocols for tDCS trials based on evidence of blinding failure factors.
• Assessing time-resolved blinding measures based on the finding that end-of-study 'guess' measures overestimate blinding.
• Implementing device-locked randomization with audit trails based on the proposed specification-grade recommendations.
• Modeling intracranial E-fields for sham design based on the recommendation to constrain fields below a conservative ceiling.
• Planning preregistration of blinding thresholds based on the identified need to reduce trial variability.

Strengths

• Evidence synthesis covers a defined period from 2010 to 2024 with a targeted update through 2025.
• Proposes five concrete, specification-grade recommendations derived from recurrent methodological failures.
• File size is 143.2 KB, indicating a concise, focused document.

Limitations

• The dataset is a single PDF document; column-level data and sample data are unavailable.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The document's content is a review and methodological proposal, not a primary data collection.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Evidence synthesis and literature review.

Time Range

January 1, 2010 to August 31, 2024, with a targeted update through September 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-05 05:28:47; freshness should be verified.