Au Jacky, Katz Benjamin, Buschkuehl Martin, Bunarjo Kimberly, Senger Thea, Zabel Chelsea, Jaeggi Susanne M, Jonides John
University of California, Irvine.
MIND Research Institute, Irvine, CA.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2016 Sep;28(9):1419-32. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00979. Epub 2016 May 11.
Working memory (WM) is a fundamental cognitive ability that supports complex thought but is limited in capacity. Thus, WM training interventions have become very popular as a means of potentially improving WM-related skills. Another promising intervention that has gained increasing traction in recent years is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a noninvasive form of brain stimulation that can modulate cortical excitability and temporarily increase brain plasticity. As such, it has the potential to boost learning and enhance performance on cognitive tasks. This study assessed the efficacy of tDCS to supplement WM training. Sixty-two participants were randomized to receive either right prefrontal, left prefrontal, or sham stimulation with concurrent visuospatial WM training over the course of seven training sessions. Results showed that tDCS enhanced training performance, which was strikingly preserved several months after training completion. Furthermore, we observed stronger effects when tDCS was spaced over a weekend break relative to consecutive daily training, and we also demonstrated selective transfer in the right prefrontal group to nontrained tasks of visual and spatial WM. These findings shed light on how tDCS may be leveraged as a tool to enhance performance on WM-intensive learning tasks.
工作记忆（WM）是一种支持复杂思维的基本认知能力，但其容量有限。因此，工作记忆训练干预作为一种潜在改善与工作记忆相关技能的手段变得非常流行。近年来，另一种越来越受到关注的有前景的干预方法是经颅直流电刺激（tDCS），这是一种非侵入性脑刺激形式，可调节皮质兴奋性并暂时增加大脑可塑性。因此，它有潜力促进学习并提高认知任务的表现。本研究评估了经颅直流电刺激补充工作记忆训练的效果。62名参与者被随机分配接受右前额叶、左前额叶或伪刺激，并在七个训练阶段同时进行视觉空间工作记忆训练。结果表明，经颅直流电刺激增强了训练表现，这种表现训练完成几个月后仍显著保持。此外，我们观察到与连续每日训练相比，经颅直流电刺激在周末休息期间间隔进行时效果更强，并且我们还证明了右前额叶组对视觉和空间工作记忆的未训练任务有选择性迁移。这些发现揭示了如何将经颅直流电刺激作为一种工具来提高在依赖工作记忆的学习任务上的表现。
