Background: γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a primary inhibitory neurotransmitter that plays a significant role in the central nervous system. Studies on both animals and humans show that GABA has the pharmacological potential for reducing the impact of cognitive disorders, as well as enhancing cognitive functions and mood. However, its specific effects on human attention and working memory have not yet been extensively studied. Aims: In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, and crossover trial, we aimed to test whether the administration of 800 mg GABA, dissolved in a drink, acutely affected visual working memory (VWM) maintenance, as well as temporal and spatial attention in healthy adults. Methods: The participants were 32 young adults (16 females and 16 males). Working memory recall precision, spatial attention and temporal attention were measured by a delayed match-to-sample task, a visual search (VS) task and a speeded rapid serial visual presentation task, respectively. Participants completed two experimental sessions (GABA and Placebo) in randomized and counterbalanced order. In each session, 45 min after administration of the drink, they completed all three aforementioned cognitive tasks. Results: Linear mixed model analysis results showed that GABA increased VS time, compared to the placebo, but did not affect VS accuracy, temporal attention, nor VWM precision. Conclusions: The results suggest that GABA increases VS time but does not affect temporal attention and memory, and that previously reported effects on cognition might rely on other functions.
Previous research has shown that more information can be stored in visual working memory (VWM) when multiple items belong to the same object. Here, in four experiments, we investigated the object effect on memory for spatially equidistant features by manipulating simple, task-irrelevant contours that combined these features. In Experiments 1, 3, and, 4, three grating orientations, and in Experiment 2, one color and two orientations, were presented simultaneously to be memorized. Mixture modeling was applied to estimate both the precision and the guess rates of recall errors. Overall results showed that two target features were remembered more accurately when both were part of the same object. Further analysis showed that the probability of recall increased in particular when both features were extracted from the same object. In Experiment 2, we found that the object effect was greater for features from orthogonal dimensions, but this came at the cost of lower memory precision. In Experiment 3, when we kept the locations of the features perfectly consistent over trials so that the participants could attend to these locations rather than the contour, we still found object benefits. Finally, in Experiment 4 when we manipulated the temporal order of the object and the memory features presentations, it was confirmed that the object benefit is unlikely to stem from the strategical usage of object information. These results suggested that the object benefit arises automatically, likely at an early perceptual level.
γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a primary inhibitory neurotransmitter that plays a significant role in the central nervous system. Studies on both animals and humans show it has the pharmacological potential for reducing the impact of cognitive disorders, as well as enhancing cognitive functions and mood. However, its specific effects on human attention and working memory have not yet been extensively studied. In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, and crossover trial, we tested whether the administration of 800 mg GABA, dissolved in a drink, acutely affected visual working memory maintenance, as well as temporal and spatial attention in healthy adults. The participants were 32 young adults (16 females and 16 males). Working memory recall precision, spatial attention and temporal attention were measured by a delayed match-to-sample task, a visual search task, and a speeded rapid serial visual presentation task, respectively. Participants completed two experimental sessions (GABA and Placebo) in randomized and counterbalanced order. In each session, forty-five minutes after administration of the drink, they completed the aforementioned cognitive tasks. Linear mixed model analysis results showed that GABA increased visual search time, compared to the placebo, but did not affect visual search accuracy, temporal attention, nor visual working memory precision. The results suggest that GABA increases visual search time but does not affect temporal attention and memory, and that previously reported effects on cognition might rely on other functions.
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