Does Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Improve Healthy Working Memory?: A Meta-analytic Review

Mancuso, Lauren; Ilieva, Iliana; Hamilton, Roy H.; Farah, Martha J.

doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00956

Cited by 253 publications

(206 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…We also offer recommendations for future studies that may help resolve these inconsistencies and shed more definitive light on the ability to use tES to enhance attention. As effects of tES on other domains also appear less robust than initially thought (e.g., Horvath et al 2015b;López-Alonso et al 2014, 2015Mancuso et al 2016), our recommendations may also be of value to tES researchers in fields other than attention.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…To determine promising parameter combinations, direct replications are essential. Preregistration may also facilitate progress in the field, as a recent meta-analysis of tDCS and working memory found some evidence for selective reporting of positive results (Mancuso et al 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…tDCS has been used to enhance a number of cognitive abilities (Cohen Kadosh 2014;Coffman et al 2014;Mancuso et al 2016; but see Horvath et al 2015a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Transcranial Electrical Stimulation as a Tool to Enhance Attention

et al. 2017

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Attention is a fundamental cognitive process-without it, we would be helplessly adrift in an overload of sensory input. There is considerable interest in techniques that can be used to enhance attention, including transcranial electrical stimulation (tES). We present an overview of 52 studies that have paired attention tasks with tES, mostly in the form of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In particular, we discuss four aspects of attention that have been most extensively targeted to date: visual search, spatial orienting (e.g., Posner cueing tasks), spatial bias (e.g., line bisection tasks), and sustained attention. Some promising results have been reported in each of these domains. However, drawing general conclusions about the efficacy of tES is at present hampered by a large diversity in study design and inconsistent findings. We highlight some pitfalls and opportunities and suggest how these may be addressed in future research aiming to use tES as a tool to enhance or test theoretical hypotheses about attention.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Transcranial Electrical Stimulation as a Tool to Enhance Attention

et al. 2017

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“…More complete investigation of these proposed factors represents an important hurdle for elucidating inter-individual variability. Furthermore, under-reporting of negative effects (Horvath et al, 2015b) due to publication bias (Mancuso, Ilieva, Hamilton, & Farah, 2016;Shiozawa et al, 2014;Vannorsdall et al, 2016) represents another important scientific caveat that must be addressed in order to facilitate future research progress.…”

Section: Caveats and Considerations For The Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of tDCS on motor learning and memory formation: A consensus and critical position paper

Buch

Santarnecchi

Antal

et al. 2017

Clinical Neurophysiology

306

267

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Motor skills are required for activities of daily living. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied in association with motor skill learning has been investigated as a tool for enhancing training effects in health and disease. Here, we review the published literature investigating whether tDCS can facilitate the acquisition and retention of motor skills and adaptation. A majority of reports focused on the application of anodal tDCS over the primary motor cortex (M1) during motor skill acquisition, while some evaluated tDCS applied over the cerebellum during adaptation of existing motor skills. Work in multiple laboratories is under way to develop a mechanistic understanding of tDCS effects on different forms of learning, and to optimize stimulation protocols.Efforts are required to improve reproducibility and standardization. Overall, reproducibility remains to be fully tested, effect sizes with present techniques are moderate (up to d= 0.5) (Hashemirad, Zoghi, Fitzgerald, & Jaberzadeh, 2016) and the basis of inter-individual variability in tDCS effects is incompletely understood. It is recommended that future studies explicitly state in the Methods the exploratory (hypothesisgenerating) or hypothesis-driven (confirmatory) nature of the experimental designs. General research practices could be improved with prospective pre-registration of hypothesis-based investigations, more emphasis on detailed description of methods and use of post-publication open data repositories. A checklist is proposed for reporting tDCS investigations in a way that can improve efforts to assess reproducibility.

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“…However, efficacy of tDCS has recently been disputed (e.g. : Mancuso, Ilieva, Hamilton & Farah, 2016;Horvath, Forte & Carter, 2015;Vannorsdall, van Steenburgh, Schretl, Jayatillake, Skolasky & Gordon, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The application of online transcranial random noise stimulation and perceptual learning in the improvement of visual functions in mild myopia

2016

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It has recently been demonstrated how perceptual learning, that is an improvement in a sensory/perceptual task upon practice, can be boosted by concurrent high-frequency transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS). It has also been shown that perceptual learning can generalize and produce an improvement of visual functions in participants with mild refractive defects.By using three different groups of participants (single-blind study), we tested the efficacy of a short training (8 sessions) using a single Gabor contrast-detection task with concurrent hftRNS in comparison with the same training with sham stimulation or hf-tRNS with no concurrent training, in improving visual acuity (VA) and contrast sensitivity (CS) of individuals with uncorrected mild myopia.A short training with a contrast detection task is able to improve VA and CS only if coupled with hf-tRNS, whereas no effect on VA and marginal effects on CS are seen with the sole administration of hf-tRNS.Our results support the idea that, by boosting the rate of perceptual learning via the modulation of neuronal plasticity, hf-tRNS can be successfully used to reduce the duration of the perceptual training and/or to increase its efficacy in producing perceptual learning and generalization to improved VA and CS in individuals with uncorrected mild myopia.

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Does Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Improve Healthy Working Memory?: A Meta-analytic Review

Cited by 253 publications

References 62 publications

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation as a Tool to Enhance Attention

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation as a Tool to Enhance Attention

Effects of tDCS on motor learning and memory formation: A consensus and critical position paper

The application of online transcranial random noise stimulation and perceptual learning in the improvement of visual functions in mild myopia

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