Does longitudinal frontoparietal tDCS enhance WM in older adults? Longitudinal Neurostimulation in Older Adults Improves Working Memory Kevin Jones1, Jaclyn Stephens1, Mahtab Alam2, Marom Bikson2, & Marian Berryhill1 1Cognitive & Brain Sciences, University of Nevada, Reno 2Department of Biomedical Engineering, The City College of New York Introduction Brain training programs promote the possibility of enhanced cognition! However these programs often have variable results and lack transfer of benefit to untrained tasks… Methods 4 tDCS parameters (10 minutes, 1.5 mA) Right anodal PFC, PPC, PFC/PPC alternating, or sham stimulation 10 consecutive weekdays of WM training Operation Span 4 Visuospatial WM tasks: Recall or recognition retrieval Visual or spatial stimuli 1 month follow-up 3 measures of transfer Spatial 2-back Digit span Stroop task 72 participants Average age of 64.38 years 48” x 48” max size Experimental Design Trained Tasks Transfer Tasks Main Finding All active stimulation participants had significantly greater improvement on trained and transfer tasks! This improvement persisted 1-month after final training session. Kevin Jones: KevJones22@gmail.com Dr. Marian Berryhill: MBerryhill@unr.edu Cognitive and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology, MS 296 University of Nevada Reno, NV 89557 References Chein JM & Morrison AB (2010) Psychon Bull Rev 17(2):193-199. Jaeggi SM, Buschkuehl M, Jonides J, & Perrig WJ (2008) Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105(19):6829-6833. Klingberg, T (2010) Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14(7):317-324. Richmond LL, Morrison AB, Chein JM, & Olson IR (2011) Psychol Aging 26(4):813-822. von Bastian CC, Langer A, Jänger L, Oberauer K. (2013) Mem Cognit. 41(4):611-624 Operation Span Visuospatial WM Spatial 2-back Stroop Digit Span Results 1 Month Follow-up Total Benefit Follow-up Question Does longitudinal frontoparietal tDCS enhance WM in older adults? Conclusion Noninvasive neurostimulation may allow for safe and well-tolerated enhancement of working memory Current Modeling F4 P4