Impact of tDCS on visual selective attention

Anna Pecchinenda, Francesca De Luca, Bianca Monachesi, Manuel Petrucci, & Michal Lavidor (La Sapienza Università di Roma) Impact of tDCS on visual selective attention A well-consolidated strategy for studying selective attention limitations consists of overloading the (visual) attentional system through the concurrent or very rapid presentation of multiple task-relevant visual events and assess how the presence and/or temporal proximity of task-irrelevant information modulates the probability that specific information is reported. For example, when visual events succeed one another rapidly in foveal vision, at a rate of about ten items per second (e.g., Rapid Serial Visual Presentation procedure; RSVP), our ability to report the second of two targets (T1 and T2) embedded among distractors is severely compromised when the T2 follows the T1 within a time window of 200-500 milliseconds (Attentional Blink, Broadbent & Broadbent, 1987; Raymond, et al., 1992). In this task, a good performance requires the correct identification of T1 and T2 but also the inhibition of irrelevant distractors. Previous studies indicate that a broad network of frontal and parietal regions is implicated in selective attention, with ever increasing evidence pointing to a more prominent role of dorsolateral prefrontal (DLPFC) compared to parietal regions. However, studies assessing whether potentiating the activity of the DLPFC via tDCS improves selective attention, have often provided mixed findings (e.g., Imburgio & Orr, 2018). In this contribution, I will present findings on the effects of anodal vs sham tDCS over the DLPFC and over the Posterior Parietal Cortex (PPC) to assess the contribution of top-down and bottom-up modulations on temporal selective attention. I will discuss this evidence and that of previous studies on the modulation of the Attentional Blink by tDCS over the DLPFC.