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Blinding in tDCS Studies: Correct End-of-Study Guess Does Not Moderate the Effects on Associative and Working Memory

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has become a valuable tool in cognitive neuroscience research as it enables causal inferences about neural underpinnings of cognition. However, studies using tDCS to modulate cognitive functions often yield inconsistent findings. Hence, there is an incr...

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Autores principales: Stanković, Marija, Živanović, Marko, Bjekić, Jovana, Filipović, Saša R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8773753/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35053802
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12010058
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author Stanković, Marija
Živanović, Marko
Bjekić, Jovana
Filipović, Saša R.
author_facet Stanković, Marija
Živanović, Marko
Bjekić, Jovana
Filipović, Saša R.
author_sort Stanković, Marija
collection PubMed
description Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has become a valuable tool in cognitive neuroscience research as it enables causal inferences about neural underpinnings of cognition. However, studies using tDCS to modulate cognitive functions often yield inconsistent findings. Hence, there is an increasing interest in factors that may moderate the effects, one of which is the participants’ beliefs of the tDCS condition (i.e., real or sham) they received. Namely, whether participants’ correct guessing of sham condition may lead to false-positive tDCS effects. In this study, we aimed to explore if participants’ beliefs about received stimulation type (i.e., the success of blinding) impacted their task performance in tDCS experiments on associative (AM) and working memory (WM). We analyzed data from four within-subject, sham-controlled tDCS memory experiments (N = 83) to check if the correct end-of-study guess of sham condition moderated tDCS effects. We found no evidence that sham guessing moderated post-tDCS memory performance in experiments in which tDCS effects were observed as well as in experiments that showed null effects of tDCS. The results suggest that the correct sham guessing (i.e., placebo-like effect) is unlikely to influence the results in tDCS memory experiments. We discuss the results in light of the growing debate about the relevance and effectiveness of blinding in brain stimulation research.
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spelling pubmed-87737532022-01-21 Blinding in tDCS Studies: Correct End-of-Study Guess Does Not Moderate the Effects on Associative and Working Memory Stanković, Marija Živanović, Marko Bjekić, Jovana Filipović, Saša R. Brain Sci Article Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has become a valuable tool in cognitive neuroscience research as it enables causal inferences about neural underpinnings of cognition. However, studies using tDCS to modulate cognitive functions often yield inconsistent findings. Hence, there is an increasing interest in factors that may moderate the effects, one of which is the participants’ beliefs of the tDCS condition (i.e., real or sham) they received. Namely, whether participants’ correct guessing of sham condition may lead to false-positive tDCS effects. In this study, we aimed to explore if participants’ beliefs about received stimulation type (i.e., the success of blinding) impacted their task performance in tDCS experiments on associative (AM) and working memory (WM). We analyzed data from four within-subject, sham-controlled tDCS memory experiments (N = 83) to check if the correct end-of-study guess of sham condition moderated tDCS effects. We found no evidence that sham guessing moderated post-tDCS memory performance in experiments in which tDCS effects were observed as well as in experiments that showed null effects of tDCS. The results suggest that the correct sham guessing (i.e., placebo-like effect) is unlikely to influence the results in tDCS memory experiments. We discuss the results in light of the growing debate about the relevance and effectiveness of blinding in brain stimulation research. MDPI 2021-12-31 /pmc/articles/PMC8773753/ /pubmed/35053802 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12010058 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Stanković, Marija
Živanović, Marko
Bjekić, Jovana
Filipović, Saša R.
Blinding in tDCS Studies: Correct End-of-Study Guess Does Not Moderate the Effects on Associative and Working Memory
title Blinding in tDCS Studies: Correct End-of-Study Guess Does Not Moderate the Effects on Associative and Working Memory
title_full Blinding in tDCS Studies: Correct End-of-Study Guess Does Not Moderate the Effects on Associative and Working Memory
title_fullStr Blinding in tDCS Studies: Correct End-of-Study Guess Does Not Moderate the Effects on Associative and Working Memory
title_full_unstemmed Blinding in tDCS Studies: Correct End-of-Study Guess Does Not Moderate the Effects on Associative and Working Memory
title_short Blinding in tDCS Studies: Correct End-of-Study Guess Does Not Moderate the Effects on Associative and Working Memory
title_sort blinding in tdcs studies: correct end-of-study guess does not moderate the effects on associative and working memory
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8773753/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35053802
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12010058
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