1. 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 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:
Dr. Marian Berryhill:
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):
Jaeggi SM, Buschkuehl M, Jonides J, & Perrig WJ (2008) Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105(19):
Klingberg, T (2010) Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14(7):
Richmond LL, Morrison AB, Chein JM, & Olson IR (2011) Psychol Aging 26(4):
von Bastian CC, Langer A, Jänger L, Oberauer K. (2013) Mem Cognit. 41(4):
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