title: Studying Effects of Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation on Hearing and Auditory Scene Analysis.
abstract: Recent studies have shown that perceptual detection of near-threshold auditory events may depend on the relative timing of the event and ongoing brain oscillations. Furthermore, transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), a non-invasive and silent brain stimulation technique, can entrain cortical alpha oscillations and thereby provide some experimental control over their timing. The present research investigates the potential of delta/theta-tACS to modulate hearing and auditory scene analysis. Detection of near-threshold auditory stimuli, which are modulated at 4 Hz and presented at various moments (phase lags) during ongoing tACS (two synchronous 4-Hz alternating currents applied transcranially to the two cerebral hemispheres), is measured in silence or in a masker. Results indicate that performance fluctuates as a function of phase lag and these fluctuations can be explained best by a sinusoid at the tACS frequency. This suggests that tACS may amplify/attenuate sounds that are temporally coherent/anticoherent with tACS-entrained cortical oscillations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands. L.Riecke@MaastrichtUniversity.NL.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Riecke
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006309:Hearing; D006801:Humans; D065908:Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
keywords: Auditory cortex; Brain stimulation; Entrainment; Neural oscillation; Phase alignment