Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis of Anodal tDCS Effects on Verbal Episodic Memory: Modeling Heterogeneity of Stimulation Locations

Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis of Anodal tDCS Effects on Verbal Episodic Memory Modeling Heterogeneity of Stimulation Locations

There is growing interest in the study of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, as an effective intervention to improve memory. In order to evaluate the relative efficacy of tDCS based on the location of anodal electrode sites, we conducted a sys...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Zeitschrift für Psychologie Vol. 228; no. 1; pp. 3 - 13
Main Authors: Bartl, Gergely Janos, Blackshaw, Emily, Crossman, Margot, Allen, Paul, Sandrini, Marco
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Hogrefe Publishing 01-03-2020
Subjects:
Brain Stimulation
Electrical Brain Stimulation
Episodic Memory
Human
Human Information Storage
Parietal Lobe
Prefrontal Cortex
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
Verbal Memory
Verbal Stimuli
verbal memory
parietal cortex
network meta-analysis
tDCS
prefrontal cortex
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Summary:There is growing interest in the study of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, as an effective intervention to improve memory. In order to evaluate the relative efficacy of tDCS based on the location of anodal electrode sites, we conducted a systematic review examining the effect of stimulation applied during encoding on subsequent verbal episodic memory in healthy adults. We performed a network meta-analysis of 20 studies (23 experiments) with N = 978 participants. Left ventrolateral prefrontal and temporo-parietal sites appeared most likely to enhance episodic memory, although any significant effects were based on findings from single studies only. We did not find evidence for verbal retrieval enhancement of tDCS versus sham stimulation where the effect was based on more than one experimental paper. More frequent replication efforts and stricter reporting standards may improve the quality of evidence and allow more precise estimation of population-level effects of tDCS.
ISSN:2190-8370
2151-2604
DOI:10.1027/2151-2604/a000396