Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom.
School of Life Sciences, MVLS College, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2021 Aug 5;16(8):e0255424. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255424. eCollection 2021.
Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is a popular technique that has been used for manipulating brain oscillations and inferring causality regarding the brain-behaviour relationship. Although it is a promising tool, the variability of tACS results has raised questions regarding the robustness and reproducibility of its effects. Building on recent research using tACS to modulate visuospatial attention, we here attempted to replicate findings of lateralized parietal tACS at alpha frequency to induce a change in attention bias away from the contra- towards the ipsilateral visual hemifield. 40 healthy participants underwent tACS in two separate sessions where either 10 Hz tACS or sham was applied via a high-density montage over the left parietal cortex at 1.5 mA for 20 min, while performance was assessed in an endogenous attention task. Task and tACS parameters were chosen to match those of previous studies reporting positive effects. Unlike these studies, we did not observe lateralized parietal alpha tACS to affect attention deployment or visual processing across the hemifields as compared to sham. Likewise, additional resting electroencephalography immediately offline to tACS did not reveal any notable effects on individual alpha power or frequency. Our study emphasizes the need for more replication studies and systematic investigations of the factors that drive tACS effects.
经颅交流电刺激（tACS）是一种流行的技术，用于操纵脑振荡并推断大脑-行为关系中的因果关系。尽管它是一种很有前途的工具，但 tACS 结果的可变性引发了人们对其效应的稳健性和可重复性的质疑。基于最近使用 tACS 调节视空间注意的研究，我们试图复制经颅交流电刺激在 alpha 频率下对侧顶叶的发现，以引起注意力从对侧偏向同侧视觉视野的变化。40 名健康参与者在两个单独的会话中接受 tACS 治疗，其中通过高密度蒙太奇在左顶叶以 1.5 mA 施加 10 Hz tACS 或假刺激 20 分钟，同时在一个内源性注意任务中评估性能。任务和 tACS 参数的选择与报告积极影响的先前研究相匹配。与这些研究不同，我们没有观察到经颅交流电刺激对侧顶叶 alpha 对注意力部署或视觉处理的影响与假刺激相比。同样，tACS 后立即进行的额外静息脑电图也没有显示出任何个体 alpha 功率或频率的显著影响。我们的研究强调了需要更多的复制研究和系统调查驱动 tACS 效应的因素。
