IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pbio00/3001363.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with slow rTMS enhances verbal memory formation

Author

Listed:
  • Mircea van der Plas
  • Verena Braun
  • Benjamin Johannes Stauch
  • Simon Hanslmayr

Abstract

Encoding of episodic memories relies on stimulus-specific information processing and involves the left prefrontal cortex. We here present an incidental finding from a simultaneous EEG-TMS experiment as well as a replication of this unexpected effect. Our results reveal that stimulating the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) with slow repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) leads to enhanced word memory performance. A total of 40 healthy human participants engaged in a list learning paradigm. Half of the participants (N = 20) received 1 Hz rTMS to the left DLPFC, while the other half (N = 20) received 1 Hz rTMS to the vertex and served as a control group. Participants receiving left DLPFC stimulation demonstrated enhanced memory performance compared to the control group. This effect was replicated in a within-subjects experiment where 24 participants received 1 Hz rTMS to the left DLPFC and vertex. In this second experiment, DLPFC stimulation also induced better memory performance compared to vertex stimulation. In addition to these behavioural effects, we found that 1 Hz rTMS to DLPFC induced stronger beta power modulation in posterior areas, a state that is known to be beneficial for memory encoding. Further analysis indicated that beta modulations did not have an oscillatory origin. Instead, the observed beta modulations were a result of a spectral tilt, suggesting inhibition of these parietal regions. These results show that applying 1 Hz rTMS to DLPFC, an area involved in episodic memory formation, improves memory performance via modulating neural activity in parietal regions.Encoding of episodic memories relies on stimulus-specific information processing and involves the left prefrontal cortex. An incidental finding from a simultaneous EEG-TMS experiment reveals that applying 1-Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to this area of the brain improves memory performance by modulating neural activity in parietal regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Mircea van der Plas & Verena Braun & Benjamin Johannes Stauch & Simon Hanslmayr, 2021. "Stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with slow rTMS enhances verbal memory formation," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(9), pages 1-21, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:3001363
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001363
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001363
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001363&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001363?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:3001363. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosbiology (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.