Journal
NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA
Volume 49, Issue 7, Pages 1974-1980Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.03.026
Keywords
Transcranial direct current stimulation; Transcranial random noise stimulation; Prototype distortion task; Visual categorization; Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Funding
- Rose Foundation
- German Ministry for Education and Science via the Bernstein Centre for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN), Gottingen [01GQ0432]
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The present study investigated the effects of transcranial weak electrical stimulation techniques applied to the right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on categorization learning measured using a variant of the prototype distortion task. During the training phase of this task subjects saw low- and high distortions of a prototype dot-pattern. 60 participants received 10 min of either anodal or cathodal transcranial direct current (tDCS), transcranial random noise (tRNS) or sham stimulation before and during the training. We have assessed the effects of the intervention during a test phase, where the subjects had to decide whether the consecutive high- and low-distortion versions of the prototype or random patterns that were presented belonged to the category established in the training phase. Our results show that the categorization of prototypes is significantly impaired by the application of anodal tDCS and tRNS to the DLPFC. The prototype-effect, observable in the case of the sham stimulation group, was severed in all active stimulation conditions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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