Transcranial Electric Current Stimulation During Associative Memory Encoding: Comparing TACS and TDCS Effects in Healthy Aging

Overview

Journal Front Aging Neurosci

Specialty Geriatrics

Date 2020 Apr 8

PMID 32256337

Citations 26

Authors

Katharina Klink

Jessica Peter

Patric Wyss

Stefan Kloppel

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Associative memory is one of the first cognitive functions negatively affected by healthy and pathological aging processes. Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques are easily administrable tools to support memory. However, the optimal stimulation parameters inducing a reliable positive effect on older adult's memory performance remain mostly unclear. In our randomized, double-blind, cross-over study, 28 healthy older adults (16 females; 71.18 + 6.42 years of age) received anodal transcranial direct (tDCS), alternating current in the theta range (tACS), and sham stimulation over the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) each once during encoding. We tested associative memory performance with cued recall and recognition tasks after a retention period and again on the following day. Overall, neither tDCS nor tACS showed effects on associative memory performance. Further analysis revealed a significant difference for performance on the cued recall task under tACS compared to sham when accounting for age. Our results suggest that tACS might be more effective to improve associative memory performance than tDCS in higher aged samples.

Citing Articles

Differential online and offline effects of theta-tACS on memory encoding and retrieval.

Passmann S, Baselgia S, Kasten F, Herrmann C, Rasch B Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2024; 24(5):894-911.

PMID: 39085585 PMC: 11390785. DOI: 10.3758/s13415-024-01204-w.

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation: Clinical Implication and Practice for Treatment of Psychiatric Illness.

Yang C, Jung B, Lee S Clin Psychopharmacol Neurosci. 2024; 22(3):391-404.

PMID: 39069679 PMC: 11289600. DOI: 10.9758/cpn.23.1118.

Utilizing tACS to enhance memory confidence and EEG to predict individual differences in brain stimulation efficacy.

Wynn S, Marshall T, Nyhus E bioRxiv. 2024; .

PMID: 38854074 PMC: 11160642. DOI: 10.1101/2024.05.27.596015.

No Benefit in Memory Performance after Nocturnal Memory Reactivation Coupled with Theta-tACS.

Baselgia S, Kasten F, Herrmann C, Rasch B, PaBmann S Clocks Sleep. 2024; 6(2):211-233.

PMID: 38651390 PMC: 11036246. DOI: 10.3390/clockssleep6020015.

Information-based rhythmic transcranial magnetic stimulation to accelerate learning during auditory working memory training: a proof-of-concept study.

Whittaker H, Khayyat L, Fortier-Lavallee J, Laverdiere M, Belanger C, Zatorre R Front Neurosci. 2024; 18:1355565.

PMID: 38638697 PMC: 11024337. DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1355565.

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