Cognitive Function & Aging: After a stroke, many people have trouble with memory, focus and clear thinking. Doctors call this vascular cognitive impairment (VCI): thinking problems caused by damaged or reduced blood flow to the brain. It affects up to 60% of stroke survivors in the first year, and its most severe form, vascular dementia, is the second most common type of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease.
“In this study, 72 stroke survivors all received standard stroke rehab. Some also got hyperbaric oxygen, some got a magnetic brain-stimulation treatment called TMS, some got both, and some got rehab alone. The oxygen course was 15 sessions: one hour of pure oxygen at 2.0 ATA, five days a week for three weeks. The TMS was a 20-minute daily session aimed at the brain’s planning-and-focus area. Oxygen alone improved memory and thinking scores a little more than rehab alone. Adding TMS to the oxygen roughly doubled the improvement, and only the combination was clearly better than every other group.” <view study>