Jones Kevin T, Stephens Jaclyn A, Alam Mahtab, Bikson Marom, Berryhill Marian E
Memory and Brain Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, United States of America; Cognitive Neuropsychology Lab, Department of Neurology, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America.
Memory and Brain Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2015 Apr 7;10(4):e0121904. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121904. eCollection 2015.
An increasing concern affecting a growing aging population is working memory (WM) decline. Consequently, there is great interest in improving or stabilizing WM, which drives expanded use of brain training exercises. Such regimens generally result in temporary WM benefits to the trained tasks but minimal transfer of benefit to untrained tasks. Pairing training with neurostimulation may stabilize or improve WM performance by enhancing plasticity and strengthening WM-related cortical networks. We tested this possibility in healthy older adults. Participants received 10 sessions of sham (control) or active (anodal, 1.5 mA) tDCS to the right prefrontal, parietal, or prefrontal/parietal (alternating) cortices. After ten minutes of sham or active tDCS, participants performed verbal and visual WM training tasks. On the first, tenth, and follow-up sessions, participants performed transfer WM tasks including the spatial 2-back, Stroop, and digit span tasks. The results demonstrated that all groups benefited from WM training, as expected. However, at follow-up 1-month after training ended, only the participants in the active tDCS groups maintained significant improvement. Importantly, this pattern was observed for both trained and transfer tasks. These results demonstrate that tDCS-linked WM training can provide long-term benefits in maintaining cognitive training benefits and extending them to untrained tasks.
影响日益增长的老年人口的一个越来越受关注的问题是工作记忆（WM）衰退。因此，人们对改善或稳定工作记忆有着浓厚的兴趣，这推动了大脑训练练习的广泛使用。此类训练方案通常会给训练任务带来暂时的工作记忆益处，但对未训练任务的益处转移却微乎其微。将训练与神经刺激相结合可能通过增强可塑性和强化与工作记忆相关的皮层网络来稳定或改善工作记忆表现。我们在健康的老年人中测试了这种可能性。参与者接受了10次假刺激（对照）或对右侧前额叶、顶叶或前额叶/顶叶（交替）皮层进行的有源（阳极，1.5毫安）经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）。在进行10分钟的假刺激或有源tDCS后，参与者执行言语和视觉工作记忆训练任务。在第一次、第十次和随访 session 中，参与者执行转移工作记忆任务，包括空间2-back、斯特鲁普和数字广度任务。结果表明，正如预期的那样，所有组都从工作记忆训练中受益。然而，在训练结束1个月后的随访中，只有有源tDCS组的参与者保持了显著的改善。重要的是，在训练任务和转移任务中均观察到了这种模式。这些结果表明，与tDCS相关的工作记忆训练可以在维持认知训练益处并将其扩展到未训练任务方面提供长期益处。
