title: Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex enhances memory-guided responses in a visuospatial working memory task.
abstract: Several studies have shown that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is able to enhance performances on verbal and visual working memory (WM) tasks. Available evidence points to the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) as a critical area in visual WM, but to date direct comparisons of the effects obtained by stimulating the left versus the right DLPFC in the same subject are lacking. Our aim was to determine whether tDCS over the right DLPFC can differently affect performance as compared with left DLPFC stimulation. Ten healthy subjects performed a memory-guided visuospatial task in three conditions: baseline, during anodal stimulation applied over the right and during anodal stimulation applied over the left DLPFC. All the subjects also underwent a sham stimulation as control. Our results show that only active stimulation over the right DLPFC is able to increase performance when compared to the other conditions. Our findings confirm the crucial role played by the right DLPFC in spatial WM tasks.
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Giglia
authors.forename: Filippo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Brighina
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rizzo
authors.forename: Angela
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Puma
authors.forename: Serena
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Indovino
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Maccora
authors.forename: Roberta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Baschi
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cosentino
authors.forename: Brigida
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fierro
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D065852:Spatial Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D065908:Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult