Transcranial direct current stimulation modulates shifts in global/local attention

The effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on global/local attentional switching and feature processing were assessed. Direct current stimulation was applied to the left posterior parietal cortex in 14 healthy participants. A compound letter task was used to probe the feature processing and the switching of attention between global and local features. Results indicate that cathodal stimulation acutely degraded attentional switches during stimulation, and anodal stimulation persistently degraded local-to-global attentional switching for at least 20 min after stimulation. Direct current stimulation had no significant effects on global/local feature processing. These results support the functionality of left parietal cortex in attentional switch and represent the first successful modulation of global/local switching using exogenous brain stimulation.

[1]  Uwe Herwig,et al.  Using the International 10-20 EEG System for Positioning of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation , 2004, Brain Topography.

[2]  Y. Zhuo,et al.  Modulation of Brain Activities by Hierarchical Processing: A High-Density ERP Study , 2004, Brain Topography.

[3]  G. Barkley,et al.  Controversies in neurophysiology. MEG is superior to EEG in localization of interictal epileptiform activity: Pro , 2004, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[4]  Á. Pascual-Leone,et al.  Noninvasive human brain stimulation. , 2007, Annual review of biomedical engineering.

[5]  R. Racine,et al.  Long-Term Depression and Depotentiation in the Sensorimotor Cortex of the Freely Moving Rat , 2000, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[6]  James T. Townsend,et al.  The Stochastic Modeling of Elementary Psychological Processes , 1983 .

[7]  N Accornero,et al.  Polarization of the human motor cortex through the scalp , 1998, Neuroreport.

[8]  Carmel Mevorach,et al.  Opposite biases in salience-based selection for the left and right posterior parietal cortex , 2006, Nature Neuroscience.

[9]  Walter Paulus,et al.  Oscillatory brain activity and transcranial direct current stimulation in humans , 2004, Neuroreport.

[10]  G. Mangun,et al.  Effects of practice on executive control investigated with fMRI. , 2002, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[11]  Christian Büchel,et al.  Integration of local features to a global percept by neural coupling. , 2006, Cerebral cortex.

[12]  Shingo Yamagata,et al.  Cerebral Asymmetry of the “Top-Down” Allocation of Attention to Global and Local Features , 2000, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[13]  K. Hoffmann,et al.  Direct Current Stimulation over V5 Enhances Visuomotor Coordination by Improving Motion Perception in Humans , 2004, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[14]  M. Behrmann,et al.  Parietal cortex and attention , 2004, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[15]  Gregor Volberg,et al.  Deconfounding the effects of congruency and task difficulty on hemispheric differences in global/local processing. , 2007, Experimental psychology.

[16]  J. Born,et al.  Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation during Sleep Improves Declarative Memory , 2004, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[17]  F. Rösler,et al.  The human dorsal action control system develops in the absence of vision. , 2009, Cerebral cortex.

[18]  R. Kimchi.  Primacy of wholistic processing and global/local paradigm: a critical review. , 1992, Psychological bulletin.

[19]  A. Wróbel,et al.  Beta activity: a carrier for visual attention. , 2000, Acta neurobiologiae experimentalis.

[20]  Scott E. Maxwell,et al.  Designing Experiments and Analyzing Data , 1992 .

[21]  J. Schatz,et al.  Level-repetition effects in hierarchical stimulus processing: timing and location of cortical activity. , 2003, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[22]  M. Nitsche,et al.  Excitability changes induced in the human primary visual cortex by transcranial direct current stimulation: direct electrophysiological evidence. , 2004, Investigative ophthalmology & visual science.

[23]  D. Navon.  Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception , 1977, Cognitive Psychology.

[24]  Carsten H. Wolters,et al.  Modeling transcranial DC stimulation , 2008, 2008 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[25]  G. R. Mangun,et al.  A Role for Top-Down Attentional Orienting during Interference between Global and Local Aspects of Hierarchical Stimuli , 2002, NeuroImage.

[26]  L. Cohen,et al.  Transcranial DC stimulation (tDCS): A tool for double-blind sham-controlled clinical studies in brain stimulation , 2006, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[27]  Walter Paulus,et al.  Transcranial direct current stimulation applied over the somatosensory cortex – Differential effect on low and high frequency SEPs , 2006, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[28]  M. Nitsche,et al.  Facilitation of Implicit Motor Learning by Weak Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of the Primary Motor Cortex in the Human , 2003, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[29]  M. Nitsche,et al.  Excitability changes induced in the human motor cortex by weak transcranial direct current stimulation , 2000, The Journal of physiology.

[30]  Sergio P. Rigonatti,et al.  Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation of prefrontal cortex enhances working memory , 2005, Experimental Brain Research.

[31]  M. Nitsche,et al.  Transcranial direct current stimulation disrupts tactile perception , 2004, The European journal of neuroscience.

[32]  M. Hallett,et al.  Modeling the current distribution during transcranial direct current stimulation , 2006, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[33]  L. Robertson,et al.  Neuropsychological contributions to theories of part/whole organization , 1991, Cognitive Psychology.

[34]  Shihui Han,et al.  Global perception depends on coherent work of bilateral visual cortices: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies , 2007, Science in China Series C: Life Sciences.

[35]  Shihui Han,et al.  The role of parietal cortex in global/local processing of hierarchical stimuli: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study , 2007, Neuroreport.

[36]  A. Priori,et al.  Non‐synaptic mechanisms underlie the after‐effects of cathodal transcutaneous direct current stimulation of the human brain , 2005, The Journal of physiology.

[37]  Richard S. J. Frackowiak,et al.  Where in the brain does visual attention select the forest and the trees? , 1996, Nature.

[38]  M G Woldorff,et al.  Hemispheric asymmetries for different components of global/local attention occur in distinct temporo-parietal loci. , 2005, Cerebral cortex.

[39]  G. Schlaug,et al.  Testing for causality with transcranial direct current stimulation: pitch memory and the left supramarginal gyrus , 2006, Neuroreport.