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Access to consciousness of briefly presented visual events is modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Adaptive behaviour requires the ability to process goal-relevant events at the expense of irrelevant ones. However, perception of a relevant visual event can transiently preclude access to consciousness of subsequent events — a phenomenon called attentional blink (AB). Here we investigated involveme...

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Autores principales: Sdoia, Stefano, Conversi, David, Pecchinenda, Anna, Ferlazzo, Fabio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6662720/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31358875
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-47527-4
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author Sdoia, Stefano
Conversi, David
Pecchinenda, Anna
Ferlazzo, Fabio
author_facet Sdoia, Stefano
Conversi, David
Pecchinenda, Anna
Ferlazzo, Fabio
author_sort Sdoia, Stefano
collection PubMed
description Adaptive behaviour requires the ability to process goal-relevant events at the expense of irrelevant ones. However, perception of a relevant visual event can transiently preclude access to consciousness of subsequent events — a phenomenon called attentional blink (AB). Here we investigated involvement of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in conscious access, by using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to potentiate or reduce neural excitability in the context of an AB task. In a sham-controlled experimental design, we applied between groups anodal or cathodal tDCS over the left DLPFC, and examined whether this stimulation modulated the proportion of stimuli that were consciously reported during the AB period. We found that tDCS over the left DLPFC affected the proportion of consciously perceived target stimuli. Moreover, anodal and cathodal tDCS had opposing effects, and exhibited different temporal patterns. Anodal stimulation attenuated the AB, enhancing conscious report earlier in the AB period. Cathodal stimulation accentuated the AB, reducing conscious report later in the AB period. These findings support the notion that the DLPFC plays a role in facilitating information transition from the unconscious to the conscious stage of processing.
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spelling pubmed-66627202019-08-02 Access to consciousness of briefly presented visual events is modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex Sdoia, Stefano Conversi, David Pecchinenda, Anna Ferlazzo, Fabio Sci Rep Article Adaptive behaviour requires the ability to process goal-relevant events at the expense of irrelevant ones. However, perception of a relevant visual event can transiently preclude access to consciousness of subsequent events — a phenomenon called attentional blink (AB). Here we investigated involvement of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in conscious access, by using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to potentiate or reduce neural excitability in the context of an AB task. In a sham-controlled experimental design, we applied between groups anodal or cathodal tDCS over the left DLPFC, and examined whether this stimulation modulated the proportion of stimuli that were consciously reported during the AB period. We found that tDCS over the left DLPFC affected the proportion of consciously perceived target stimuli. Moreover, anodal and cathodal tDCS had opposing effects, and exhibited different temporal patterns. Anodal stimulation attenuated the AB, enhancing conscious report earlier in the AB period. Cathodal stimulation accentuated the AB, reducing conscious report later in the AB period. These findings support the notion that the DLPFC plays a role in facilitating information transition from the unconscious to the conscious stage of processing. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC6662720/ /pubmed/31358875 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-47527-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Sdoia, Stefano
Conversi, David
Pecchinenda, Anna
Ferlazzo, Fabio
Access to consciousness of briefly presented visual events is modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
title Access to consciousness of briefly presented visual events is modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
title_full Access to consciousness of briefly presented visual events is modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
title_fullStr Access to consciousness of briefly presented visual events is modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
title_full_unstemmed Access to consciousness of briefly presented visual events is modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
title_short Access to consciousness of briefly presented visual events is modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
title_sort access to consciousness of briefly presented visual events is modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6662720/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31358875
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-47527-4
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