Open AccessExamining the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on human episodic memory with machine learning
Author(s) -
Aleksandra Petrovskaya,
Bogdan Kirillov,
Anastasiya Asmolova,
Giulia Galli,
Matteo Feurra,
Angela Medvedeva
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0235179
Subject(s) - transcranial direct current stimulation , ventrolateral prefrontal cortex , memorization , dorsolateral prefrontal cortex , cognition , prefrontal cortex , semantic memory , cognitive psychology , working memory , episodic memory , neuroscience , psychology , computer science , stimulation
We aimed to replicate a published effect of transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS)-induced recognition enhancement over the human ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and analyse the data with machine learning. We investigated effects over an adjacent region, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). In total, we analyzed data from 97 participants after exclusions. We found weak or absent effects over the VLPFC and DLPFC. We conducted machine learning studies to examine the effects of semantic and phonetic features on memorization, which revealed no effect of VLPFC tDCS on the original dataset or the current data. The highest contributing factor to memory performance was individual differences in memory not explained by word features, tDCS group, or sample size, while semantic, phonetic, and orthographic word characteristics did not contribute significantly. To our knowledge, this is the first tDCS study to investigate cognitive effects with machine learning, and future studies may benefit from studying physiological as well as cognitive effects with data-driven approaches and computational models.