Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy; Milan Center for Neuroscience, Neuromi, Italy.
Milan Center for Neuroscience, Neuromi, Italy; Ph.D. Program in Neuroscience, Department of Medicine and Surgery, University Milano-Bicocca, Monza, Italy; Psychology Service, Department of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Services, Mediterranean Institute for Transplantation and Advanced Specialized Therapies (IRCCS-ISMETT), Palermo, Italy.
Brain Lang. 2020 May;204:104757. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104757. Epub 2020 Feb 7.
In a previous sham-controlled study, we showed the feasibility of increasing language comprehension in healthy participants by applying anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (atDCS) over the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG). In the present work, we present a follow-up experiment targeting with atDCS the left inferior parietal cortex (LIPC) while participants performed the same auditory comprehension task used in our previous experiment. Both neural sites (LIFG and LIPC) are crucial hubs of Baddeley's model of verbal short-term memory (vSTM). AtDCS over LIPC decreased accuracy as compared to sham and LIFG stimulation, suggesting the involvement of this area in sentence comprehension. Crucially, our results highlighted that applying tDCS over different hubs of the same neural network can lead to opposite behavioural results, with relevant implications from a clinical perspective.
在之前的一项假刺激对照研究中，我们通过对左额下回（LIFG）施加经颅直流电刺激（atDCS），证明了提高健康参与者语言理解能力的可行性。在本工作中，我们在参与者执行与我们之前实验相同的听觉理解任务时，使用 atDCS 刺激左顶下小叶皮层（LIPC），开展了一项后续实验。这两个神经部位（LIFG 和 LIPC）均为巴德利言语工作记忆模型（vSTM）的关键枢纽。与假刺激和 LIFG 刺激相比，LIPC 的 atDCS 降低了准确性，这表明该区域参与了句子理解。至关重要的是，我们的结果突出表明，在同一神经网络的不同枢纽上施加 tDCS 会导致相反的行为结果，这从临床角度具有重要意义。
