Evidence Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Can Improve Saccadic Eye Movement Control in Older Adults

Chen, Po Ling; Stenling, Andreas; Machado, Liana

doi:10.3390/vision2040042

Cited by 5 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…But these varied highly between individuals and did not seem to exceed the differences that were already present in the baseline block. Collectively, these results do not support an effect of FEF-tDCS on the speed or accuracy of eye movements, and add to a growing body of work that found no results of FEF-tDCS (Ball et al, 2013;Chen and Machado, 2017;Ellison et al, 2014), and tDCS in general (Medina and Cason, 2017;Vöröslakos et al, 2018).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 81%

“…Similar to the main finding in Kanai et al (2012), Tseng et al (2014) showed that anodal FEF-tDCS shortened the latency of prosaccades to a (neutral) face stimulus in the presence of distractors (fearful or scrambled faces). In contrast, Chen and Machado (2017) found no effects of anodal or cathodal tDCS on either pro-or antisaccades, even though their study closely resembled the one by Kanai and colleagues. Two more studies paired FEF-tDCS with a visual search task (Ball et al, 2013;Ellison et al, 2017), which is known to depend on the FEF (Reynolds and Chelazzi, 2004), but tDCS did not affect reaction times in either study.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 56%

“…Lesions of the frontal eye field also impact antisaccades and memory-guided saccades more heavily than simple prosaccades (Rivaud et al, 1994). However, other FEF-tDCS studies that have used more complex tasks like visual search (Ball et al, 2013;Ellison et al, 2017) or the antisaccade task (Chen and Machado, 2017) still found no effects of tDCS.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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No evidence that frontal eye field tDCS affects latency or accuracy of prosaccades

Reteig

Knapen

Roelofs

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may be used to directly affect neural activity from outside of the skull. However, its exact physiological mechanisms remain elusive, particularly when applied to new brain areas. The frontal eye field (FEF) has rarely been targeted with tDCS, even though it plays a crucial role in control of overt and covert spatial attention. Here we investigate whether tDCS over the FEF can affect the latency and accuracy of saccadic eye movements. 26 participants performed a prosaccade task in which they made eye movements to a sudden-onset eccentric visual target (lateral saccades). After each lateral saccade, they made an eye movement back to the center (center saccades). The task was administered before, during and after anodal or cathodal tDCS over the FEF, in a randomized, double-blind, within-subject design. One previous study (Kanai et al., 2012) found that anodal tDCS over the FEF decreased the latency of saccades contralateral to the stimulated hemisphere. We did not find the same effect: neither anodal nor cathodal tDCS influenced the latency of lateral saccades. tDCS also did not affect accuracy of lateral saccades (saccade endpoint deviation and saccade endpoint variability). For center saccades, we found some differences between the anodal and cathodal sessions, but these were not consistent across analyses (latency, endpoint variability), or were already present before tDCS onset (endpoint deviation). We tried to improve on the design of Kanai et al. (2012) in several ways, including the tDCS duration and electrode montage, which could explain the discrepant results. Our findings add to a growing number of null results, which have sparked concerns that tDCS outcomes are highly variable. Future studies should aim to establish the boundary conditions for frontal eye field tDCS to be effective, in addition to increasing sample size and adding additional controls such as a sham condition. At present, we conclude that it is unclear whether eye movements or other aspects of spatial attention can be affected through tDCS of the frontal eye fields.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 81%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 56%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

See 1 more Smart Citation

No evidence that frontal eye field tDCS affects latency or accuracy of prosaccades

Reteig

Knapen

Roelofs

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Similar to the main finding in Kanai et al (2012) , Tseng et al (2014) showed that anodal FEF-tDCS shortened the latency of prosaccades to a (neutral) face stimulus in the presence of distractors (fearful or scrambled faces). In contrast, Chen and Machado (2017) found no effects of anodal or cathodal tDCS on either pro- or antisaccades, even though their study closely resembled the one by Kanai et al (2012) . Two more studies paired FEF-tDCS with a visual search task ( Ball et al, 2013 ; Ellison et al, 2017 ), which is known to depend on the FEF ( Reynolds and Chelazzi, 2004 ), but tDCS did not affect reaction times in either study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…Both the sample size and the effect size in Kanai et al (2012) were on the smaller side: anodal tDCS shortened saccade latency by around 6 ms, and there were 16 participants in each group (anodal and cathodal). Indeed, Chen and Machado (2017) did not find this effect, even though their study was highly similar. Recently, the number of tDCS studies that have produced null results has grown steadily (see the other studies in this Research Topic), thereby casting doubt on the efficacy of the technique and the replicability of the existing tDCS literature ( Horvath et al, 2014 , 2015 ; Medina and Cason, 2017 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

No Evidence That Frontal Eye Field tDCS Affects Latency or Accuracy of Prosaccades

et al. 2018

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Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may be used to directly affect neural activity from outside of the skull. However, its exact physiological mechanisms remain elusive, particularly when applied to new brain areas. The frontal eye field (FEF) has rarely been targeted with tDCS, even though it plays a crucial role in control of overt and covert spatial attention. Here, we investigate whether tDCS over the FEF can affect the latency and accuracy of saccadic eye movements. Twenty-six participants performed a prosaccade task in which they made eye movements to a sudden-onset eccentric visual target (lateral saccades). After each lateral saccade, they made an eye movement back to the center (center saccades). The task was administered before, during, and after anodal or cathodal tDCS over the FEF, in a randomized, double-blind, within-subject design. One previous study (Kanai et al., 2012) found that anodal tDCS over the FEF decreased the latency of saccades contralateral to the stimulated hemisphere. We did not find the same effect: neither anodal nor cathodal tDCS influenced the latency of lateral saccades. tDCS also did not affect accuracy of lateral saccades (saccade endpoint deviation and saccade endpoint variability). For center saccades, we found some differences between the anodal and cathodal sessions, but these were not consistent across analyses (latency, endpoint variability), or were already present before tDCS onset (endpoint deviation). We tried to improve on the design of Kanai et al. (2012) in several ways, including the tDCS duration and electrode montage, which could explain the discrepant results. Our findings add to a growing number of null results, which have sparked concerns that tDCS outcomes are highly variable. Future studies should aim to establish the boundary conditions for FEF-tDCS to be effective, in addition to increasing sample size and adding additional controls such as a sham condition. At present, we conclude that it is unclear whether eye movements or other aspects of spatial attention can be affected through tDCS of the frontal eye fields.

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Understanding cognition and how it changes with aging, brain disease, and lifestyle choices

Machado

2020

Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand

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Evidence Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Can Improve Saccadic Eye Movement Control in Older Adults

Cited by 5 publications

References 54 publications

No evidence that frontal eye field tDCS affects latency or accuracy of prosaccades

No evidence that frontal eye field tDCS affects latency or accuracy of prosaccades

No Evidence That Frontal Eye Field tDCS Affects Latency or Accuracy of Prosaccades

Understanding cognition and how it changes with aging, brain disease, and lifestyle choices

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