tACS facilitates flickering driving by boosting steady-state visual evoked potentials

Objective. There has become of increasing interest in transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) since its inception nearly a decade ago. tACS in modulating brain state is an active area of research and has been demonstrated effective in various neuropsychological and clinical domains. In the visual domain, much effort has been dedicated to brain rhythms and rhythmic stimulation, i.e. tACS. However, less is known about the interplay between the rhythmic stimulation and visual stimulation. Approach. Here, we used steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), induced by flickering driving as a widely used technique for frequency-tagging, to investigate the aftereffect of tACS in healthy human subjects. Seven blocks of 64-channel electroencephalogram were recorded before and after the administration of 20min 10Hz tACS, while subjects performed several blocks of SSVEP tasks. We characterized the physiological properties of tACS aftereffect by comparing and validating the temporal, spatial, spatiotemporal and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) patterns between and within blocks in real tACS and sham tACS. Main results. Our result revealed that tACS boosted the 10Hz SSVEP significantly. Besides, the aftereffect on SSVEP was mitigated with time and lasted up to 5 min. Significance. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of facilitating the flickering driving by external rhythmic stimulation and open a new possibility to alter the brain state in a direction by noninvasive transcranial brain stimulation.

Automated summary

This study investigated the effect of tACS on healthy human subjects and found that tACS significantly boosted the frequency of SSVEP. Additionally, the aftereffect on SSVEP decreased with time and lasted up to 5 minutes.