Tag Archives: cognitive control

A little jolt helps the brain get back on track | Vanderbilt.edu

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First, participants donned EEG monitors and performed a challenging cognitive control task specifically designed to trip them up. “We saw a beautiful burst of low-frequency activity [from the medial-frontal cortex] right after someone made a mistake,” said Reinhart. “But it was deficient in our patients with schizophrenia.”

In healthy individuals, these theta waves were steady and synchronized, but in people with schizophrenia, the waves were weak and disorganized, suggesting that they were having a harder time processing the mistake. And the subjects’ behavior bore that out—the healthy subjects slowed down by a few milliseconds when they made mistakes and did better in the next round, while the subjects with schizophrenia did not.

After tDCS, the picture was dramatically different. The electrical stimulation to the scalp significantly improved the strength and synchrony of the brain waves in both groups but most notably in people with schizophrenia. “The results of our study clearly indicate that it is possible to restore error-monitoring in people with schizophrenia with tDCS,” said Park.

Source: A little jolt helps the brain get back on track

Recent tDCS Papers of Interest

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  1. Acute working memory improvement after tDCS in antidepressant-free patients with Major Depressive Disorder. All effect sizes were large. In other words, one session of tDCS acutely enhanced WM in depressed subjects…(Paywall)
  2. Neurobiological Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: A Review The purpose of this systematic review is to summarize the current knowledge regarding the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the effects of tDCS. (pdf)
  3. Modulating Human Procedural Learning by Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. Our finding that anodal cerebellar tDCS improves an implicit learning type essential to the development of several motor skills or cognitive activity suggests that the cerebellum has a critical role in procedural learning. (Paywall)
  4. Neuroenhancement of the aging brain: Restoring skill acquisition in old subjects. These results suggest noninvasive brain stimulation as a promising and safe tool to potentially assist functional independence of aged individuals in daily life. (Paywall)
  5. Examining transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) as a treatment for hallucinations in schizophrenia. Although this study is limited by the small sample size, the results show promise for treating refractory auditory verbal hallucinations and other selected manifestations of schizophrenia. (Paywall)
  6. Modulation of training by single-session transcranial direct current stimulation to the intact motor cortex enhances motor skill acquisition of the paretic hand.These results indicate that tDCS is a promising tool to improve not only motor behavior, but also procedural learning. (Paywall)
  7. Interactions between transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and pharmacological interventions in the Major Depressive Episode: Findings from a naturalistic study. tDCS over the DLPFC acutely improved depressive symptoms. Besides the inherent limitations of our naturalistic design, our results suggest that tDCS effects might vary according to prior pharmacological treatment… (Paywall)
  8. Amelioration of Cognitive Control in Depression by Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. Deficient cognitive control over emotional distraction is a central characteristic of major depressive disorder (MDD). The present study demonstrates that anodal tDCS applied to the left dlPFC improves deficient cognitive control in MDD. (Paywall)
  9. Comparing immediate transient tinnitus suppression using tACS and tDCS: a placebo-controlled study. Our main result was that bifrontal tDCS modulates tinnitus annoyance and tinnitus loudness… (Paywall)
  10. Review of transcranial direct current stimulation in poststroke recovery. In this review, we summarize characteristics of tDCS (method of stimulation, safety profile, and mechanism) and its application in the treatment of various stroke-related deficits… (Paywall)
  11. Enhancing vigilance in operators with prefrontal cortex transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). These findings indicate that tDCS may be well-suited to mitigate performance degradation in work settings requiring sustained attention or as a possible treatment for neurological or psychiatric disorders involving sustained attention. (Paywall)