School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, McElwain Building, Campbell Road, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Building 79, Upland Road, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Dec 9;33(24):11679-11694. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhad406.
A pervasive limitation in cognition is reflected by the performance costs we experience when attempting to undertake two tasks simultaneously. While training can overcome these multitasking costs, the more elusive objective of training interventions is to induce persistent gains that transfer across tasks. Combined brain stimulation and cognitive training protocols have been employed to improve a range of psychological processes and facilitate such transfer, with consistent gains demonstrated in multitasking and decision-making. Neural activity in frontal, parietal, and subcortical regions has been implicated in multitasking training gains, but how the brain supports training transfer is poorly understood. To investigate this, we combined transcranial direct current stimulation of the prefrontal cortex and multitasking training, with functional magnetic resonance imaging in 178 participants. We observed transfer to a visual search task, following 1 mA left or right prefrontal cortex transcranial direct current stimulation and multitasking training. These gains persisted for 1-month post-training. Notably, improvements in visual search performance for the right hemisphere stimulation group were associated with activity changes in the right hemisphere dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, intraparietal sulcus, and cerebellum. Thus, functional dynamics in these task-general regions determine how individuals respond to paired stimulation and training, resulting in enhanced performance on an untrained task.
认知的普遍局限反映在我们试图同时执行两项任务时所经历的表现成本上。虽然培训可以克服这些多任务成本，但培训干预更难以捉摸的目标是诱导跨任务的持久收益。联合脑刺激和认知训练方案已被用于改善一系列心理过程，并促进这种转移，在多任务处理和决策方面取得了一致的收益。额顶叶和皮质下区域的神经活动与多任务训练收益有关，但大脑如何支持训练转移仍知之甚少。为了研究这一点，我们结合了经颅直流电刺激前额叶和多任务训练，并对 178 名参与者进行了功能磁共振成像。我们观察到在接受 1mA 左或右前额叶经颅直流电刺激和多任务训练后，向视觉搜索任务的转移。这些收益在训练后 1 个月内持续存在。值得注意的是，对于右侧刺激组，视觉搜索表现的改善与右侧背外侧前额叶皮层、顶内沟和小脑的活动变化有关。因此，这些任务通用区域的功能动态决定了个体如何对配对刺激和训练做出反应，从而在未受过训练的任务上提高表现。
