Neural Noise- Transcranial electrical stimulation trials exhibit variable reporting quality; rates of complete reporting remain low across the field.1
Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)
- The community response to low tES reporting quality is RATES (Report Approval for Transcranial Electrical Stimulation), a consensus reporting checklist developed through a three-round online Delphi study and published as a Nature Protocols Consensus Statement (2025).2
- Panel formation: 123 experts were invited in June 2023, 56 (45.5%) accepted, and the final analyzed panel was 38 experts (12 female, 26 male) spanning five continents, with 8-31 years of non-invasive brain stimulation experience (mean 18.34, SD 7.21).2
- Item inclusion used explicit quantitative thresholds: interquartile deviation (IQD) ≤1.00, percentage of positive responses (ratings of 4-5 on a five-point Likert scale) above 60%, and a mean-rating tiebreaker, with third-round internal consistency judged by Cronbach’s α ≥0.80.2
- The checklist began with 50 items across five domains (stimulator/device 9, electrodes 9, current 7, timing 9, procedure parameters 16); 20 new items were added in round two, and consensus ultimately retained 66 of the roughly 70 candidate items.2
- RATES is explicitly aimed at documenting study designs, stimulation parameters, electrode positioning, timing, stimulator characteristics, and experimental procedures to improve replicability, cross-study comparability, and meta-analysis, mirroring how CONSORT adoption improved RCT reporting.2
- A parallel effort, CoRE-tES (Consolidated Guidelines for Reporting and Evaluation of studies using tES), is being built via its own international Delphi process to grade both methodological and reporting quality of laboratory- and home-based tES, covering tDCS, tACS, and transcranial random noise stimulation.3
- CoRE-tES follows the EQUATOR Network’s guideline-development recommendations across five overlapping stages, with a consensus meeting scheduled for April 2026 and dissemination planned for late 2026; its rationale cites substantial methodological heterogeneity and incomplete reporting, especially for home-based tES, and the prior absence of a tES-specific guideline (unlike TMS).3
- Complementary methods work on sham tDCS controls (Frontiers, 2026) argues that end-of-study “guess” measures overestimate blinding and recommends time-resolved blinding assessment, capping intracranial E-fields with modeling tools, standardized ramp/impedance protocols, device-locked randomization with audit trails, and preregistered blinding thresholds.4