Conventional and HD-tDCS May (or May Not) Modulate Overt Attentional Orienting: An Integrated Spatio-Temporal Approach and Methodological Reflections.

Diana, Lorenzo; Scotti, Giulia; Aiello, Edoardo N; Pilastro, Patrick; Eberhard-Moscicka, Aleksandra K; Müri, René M; Bolognini, Nadia (2021). Conventional and HD-tDCS May (or May Not) Modulate Overt Attentional Orienting: An Integrated Spatio-Temporal Approach and Methodological Reflections. Brain Sciences, 12(1) MDPI 10.3390/brainsci12010071

Preview

Text Diana__2022__Conventional_and_HD-tDCS_May_Modulate_overt_attentional_orienting.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (2MB) | Preview

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) has been employed to modulate visuo-spatial attentional asymmetries, however, further investigation is needed to characterize tDCS-associated variability in more ecological settings. In the present research, we tested the effects of offline, anodal conventional tDCS (Experiment 1) and HD-tDCS (Experiment 2) delivered over the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and Frontal Eye Field (FEF) of the right hemisphere in healthy participants. Attentional asymmetries were measured by means of an eye tracking-based, ecological paradigm, that is, a Free Visual Exploration task of naturalistic pictures. Data were analyzed from a spatiotemporal perspective. In Experiment 1, a pre-post linear mixed model (LMM) indicated a leftward attentional shift after PPC tDCS; this effect was not confirmed when the individual baseline performance was considered. In Experiment 2, FEF HD-tDCS was shown to induce a significant leftward shift of gaze position, which emerged after 6 s of picture exploration and lasted for 200 ms. The present results do not allow us to conclude on a clear efficacy of offline conventional tDCS and HD-tDCS in modulating overt visuospatial attention in an ecological setting. Nonetheless, our findings highlight a complex relationship among stimulated area, focality of stimulation, spatiotemporal aspects of deployment of attention, and the role of individual baseline performance in shaping the effects of tDCS.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

56 since deposited on 19 Oct 2022
36 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item