Abstract
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a potential tool for alleviating various forms of cognitive decline, including memory loss, in older adults. However, past effects of tDCS on cognitive ability have been mixed. One important potential moderator of tDCS effects is the baseline level of cognitive performance. We tested the effects of tDCS on face-name associative memory in older adults, who suffer from performance deficits in this task relative to younger adults. Stimulation was applied to the left inferior prefrontal cortex during encoding of face-name pairs, and memory was assessed with both a recognition and recall task. Face-name memory performance was decreased with the use of tDCS. This result was driven by increased false alarms when recognizing rearranged face-name pairs. This result suggests that tDCS can lead to increased false alarm rates in recognition memory, and that effects of tDCS on a specific cognitive task may depend upon cognitive capability for that task.
Highlights
Older adults tend to suffer from cognitive deficits as a normal part of the aging process [1, 2]
This result suggests that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can lead to increased false alarm rates in recognition memory, and that effects of tDCS on a specific cognitive task may depend upon cognitive capability for that task
Because older adults suffer deficits for face–name associative memory at baseline compared to younger adults [30], our results suggest that tDCS effects on cognition may be moderated by differences in baseline performance; tDCS may hinder performance but only in conditions of already poor performance
Summary
Older adults tend to suffer from cognitive deficits as a normal part of the aging process [1, 2]. Comparing active to sham stimulation, tDCS has been employed successfully in healthy older adult populations to improve performance on motor tasks [11], verbal fluency tasks [12], and working memory [13]. Past work has demonstrated that tDCS can improve episodic memory performance in older adults, as measured by both recognition [16, 17], and recall tests [18, 19]. Proper name recall is improved with tDCS [20], and – important to the associative memory deficit – it has improved object–location associative memory in older adults [21]. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a potential tool for alleviating various forms of cognitive decline, including memory loss, in older adults. One important potential moderator of tDCS effects is the baseline level of cognitive performance
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