Reward motivation and neurostimulation interact to improve working memory performance in healthy older adults: A simultaneous tDCS-fNIRS study

Rosa, Elisa Di; Brigadoi, Sabrina; Cutini, Simone; Tarantino, Vincenza; Dell’Acqua, Roberto; Mapelli, Daniela; Braver, Todd S.; Vallesi, Antonino

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116062

Cited by 44 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 116 publications

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“…To our knowledge, only one study has examined the effects of incentive on working memory in both younger and older adults (Thurm et al, 2018). The lack of studies on how incentives might affect working memory performance in younger and older adults stands in contrast to the training and neurostimulation literatures, where working memory is a frequent target because of its large age differences and importance in everyday life (Basak et al, 2008;Buschkuehl et al, 2008;Li et al, 2008;Stephens and Berryhill, 2016;Rhodes and Katz, 2017;Di Rosa et al, 2019). From a scientific perspective, another reason to examine working memory is that the range of set sizes used in many working memory tasks also provides a relatively straightforward way of examining whether age differences in the response to incentive vary as a function of task load.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, many studies have focused on reward ("gain") incentives (e.g., Castel et al, 2002;Spaniol et al, 2014;Cohen et al, 2016;Thurm et al, 2018;Di Rosa et al, 2019;Yee et al, 2019;Bowen et al, 2020). However, loss is thought to play an increasingly important part in older adults' experience, and real-world attempts to motivate their behavior often focus on the opportunity to avoid such losses (e.g., of health, of employment or financial stability, of driving privileges).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Losing Money and Motivation: Effects of Loss Incentives on Motivation and Metacognition in Younger and Older Adults

2020

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Incentives are usually expected to increase motivation and cognitive control and to thereby improve performance. A small but growing number of studies have begun to investigate whether the effects of incentive on cognitive performance differ for younger vs. older adults. Most have used attention and cognitive control paradigms, trialwise implementation of incentive condition, and gain incentives (reward), with only a very few investigating the effects of loss incentives. The present study takes a complementary approach: We tested younger and older adults in a working memory paradigm with loss incentives implemented session-wide (between subjects). We also included self-report measures to ask how loss incentive affected participants' perceptions of the mental demand of the task, as well as their perceived effort, frustration, motivation, distraction, and metacognitive judgments of how well they had performed. This allowed us to test the disparate predictions of different theoretical views: the intuitive hypothesis that incentive should increase motivation and performance, the motivational shift proposal that older adults are especially motivated to avoid losses (Freund and Ebner, 2005), a heuristic "positivity effect" perspective that older adults ignore losses (Brassen et al., 2012; Williams et al., 2017), and a more nuanced view that suggests that when negative information is unavoidable and increases perceived costs, older adults may instead disengage from the situation (Charles, 2010; Hess, 2014). The results seemed most consistent with the more nuanced view of the positivity effect. While neither group showed incentive-related performance differences, both younger and older adults reported greater perceived demand and frustration under loss incentive, especially in the most challenging conditions. Loss incentive increased the accuracy of immediate metacognitive judgments, but reduced the accuracy of later, more global judgments of competency for older adults. Self-report measures suggested that the loss incentive manipulation was distracting to young adults and demotivating for older adults. The results suggest a need for caution in generalizing from existing studies to everyday life, and that additional studies parameterizing critical aspects of task design and incentive manipulation are needed to fully understand how incentives affect cognition and motivation in younger and older adults.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Losing Money and Motivation: Effects of Loss Incentives on Motivation and Metacognition in Younger and Older Adults

2020

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“…For example, older adults increasingly relied on bilateral de-differentiated neural networks during semantic memory tasks (72), instead of left hemispheric frontal-temporal networks specifically subserving semantic knowledge in younger individuals (85). Further evidence of more globalised activity comes from Di Rosa et al's (42) finding that left PFC tDCS increased bilateral PFC activity (which subsequently improved working memory performance), whilst Manenti et al (60) showed that high performing older adults on episodic memory tasks responded equally to bilateral (rather than lateral) DLPFC stimulation. Together, this suggests bilateral hemispheric recruitment could act as a compensatory plastic strategy to support the ageing brain, in contrast to younger adult's memory faculties which might place more reliance on specialized localised circuits (100).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Di Rosa et al (42) found faster reaction times during and after stimulation of the left PFC on a visuo-spatial working memory paradigm, which corresponded with increased hemodynamic activity bilaterally in the PFC. Arciniega et al (37) found that right PFC-posterior parietal (PPC) online stimulation (as • a p = 0.01 8 CASP scores range from 0 to 9, with 0 being lowest possible quality and 9 being highest possible quality.…”

Section: Working Memorymentioning

confidence: 91%

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A Systematic Review of Non-invasive Brain Stimulation Applications to Memory in Healthy Aging

2020

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It has long been acknowledged that memory changes over the course of one's life, irrespective of diseases like dementia. Approaches to mitigate these changes have however yielded mixed results. Brain stimulation has been identified as one novel approach of augmenting older adult's memory. Thus far, such approaches have however been nuanced, targeting different memory domains with different methodologies. This has produced an amalgam of research with an unclear image overall. This systematic review therefore aims to clarify this landscape, evaluating, and interpreting available research findings in a coherent manner. A systematic search of relevant literature was conducted across Medline, PsycInfo, Psycarticles and the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, which uncovered 44 studies employing non-invasive electrical brain stimulation in healthy older adults. All studies were of generally good quality spanning numerous memory domains. Within these, evidence was found for non-invasive brain stimulation augmenting working, episodic, associative, semantic, and procedural memory, with the first three domains having the greatest evidence base. Key sites for stimulation included the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), temporoparietal region, and primary motor cortex, with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) holding the greatest literature base. Inconsistencies within the literature are highlighted and interpreted, however this discussion was constrained by potential confounding variables within the literature, a risk of bias, and challenges defining research aims and results. Non-invasive brain stimulation often did however have a positive and predictable impact on older adult's memory, and thus warrants further research to better understand these effects.

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A new perspective for evaluating the efficacy of tACS and tDCS in improving executive functions: A combined tES and fNIRS study

Lu,

Zhang,

Qiu

et al. 2023

Human Brain Mapping

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BackgroundExecutive function enhancement is considered necessary for improving the quality of life of patients with neurological or psychiatric disorders, such as attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder, obsessive‐compulsive disorder and Alzheimer's disease. Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) has been shown to have some beneficial effects on executive functioning, but the quantification of these improvements remains controversial. We aimed to explore the potential beneficial effects on executive functioning induced by the use of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS)/transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the accompanying brain function variations in the resting state.MethodsWe recruited 229 healthy adults to participate in Experiments 1 (105 participants) and 2 (124 participants). The participants in each experiment were randomly divided into tACS, tDCS, and sham groups. The participants completed cognitive tasks to assess behavior related to three core components of executive functions. Functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to monitor the hemodynamic changes in crucial cortical regions in the resting state.ResultsInhibition and cognitive flexibility (excluding working memory) were significantly increased after tACS/tDCS, but there were no significant behavioral differences between the tACS and tDCS groups. fNIRS revealed that tDCS induced decreases in the functional connectivity (increased neural efficiency) of the relevant cortices.ConclusionsEnhancement of executive function was observed after tES, and the beneficial effects of tACS/tDCS may need to be precisely evaluated via brain imaging indicators at rest. tDCS revealed better neural benefits than tACS during the stimulation phase. These findings might provide new insights for selecting intervention methods in future studies and for evaluating the clinical efficacy of tES.

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Reward motivation and neurostimulation interact to improve working memory performance in healthy older adults: A simultaneous tDCS-fNIRS study

Cited by 44 publications

References 116 publications

Losing Money and Motivation: Effects of Loss Incentives on Motivation and Metacognition in Younger and Older Adults

Losing Money and Motivation: Effects of Loss Incentives on Motivation and Metacognition in Younger and Older Adults

A Systematic Review of Non-invasive Brain Stimulation Applications to Memory in Healthy Aging

A new perspective for evaluating the efficacy of tACS and tDCS in improving executive functions: A combined tES and fNIRS study

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