Browsing by Author "Botha, Nadia"
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Item The effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on sustained attention(2017) Botha, Nadia; Striemer, ChristopherAlthough the cerebellum is primarily known for its role in motor coordination and motor learning, recent research indicates that it is also involved in cognitive functions such as attention. The current study used a mild brain stimulation technique – transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to further investigate the involvement of the cerebellum in sustained attention using two different sustained attention tasks. Specifically, we were interested in the effects of stimulation to the left lateral cerebellum on the sustained attention to response task (SART), in which participants (currently n=12) must respond (via button press) to the digits 1-9, but not 3, presented in a random continuous sequence on a computer screen. In addition, participants also completed the attentional blink task in which they must detect the presence of either one or two targets within a rapid serial visual presentation. For each task participants completed 3 sessions: sham (no stimulation), cathodal (-), and anodal (+) stimulation. Preliminary results for each task will be presented for this ongoing study.Item The effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on voluntary covert attention(2017) Botha, Nadia; Striemer, ChristopherAlthough the cerebellum is primarily known for its role in motor coordination and motor learning, recent research indicates that it is also involved in cognitive functions such as attention. The current study used a mild brain stimulation technique – transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), to further investigate the involvement of the cerebellum in attention. Specifically, we were interested in the effects of stimulation to the left lateral cerebellum on a voluntary covert attention task. Voluntary covert attention refers to an intentional shifting of attention without moving one’s eyes (e.g. paying attention to an object in your periphery). Participants completed 3 sessions: sham (no stimulation), cathodal (-), and anodal (+) stimulation. In this exploratory study, our main interest was to demonstrate a modulation of performance on the attention task following cerebellar tDCS. Therefore, any difference in performance on the attention task following either cathodal or anodal stimulations compared to sham were of interest. Consistent with previous findings, the results show that participants were faster compared to invalidly cued targets; however, these effects were not systematically altered by tDCS. We argue that the absence of any effects of tDCS on voluntary covert attention could be related to the stimulation parameters used, or the sensitivity of the behavioural tasks employed.