Thompson, Lyall; Khuc, Janine; Saccani, Maria Silvia; Zokaei, Nahid and Cappelletti, Marinella. 2021. Gamma oscillations modulate working memory recall precision. Experimental Brain Research, 239(9), pp. 2711-2724. ISSN 0014-4819 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Working memory (WM)—the ability to keep information in mind for short periods of time—is linked to attention and inhibitory abilities, i.e., the capacity to ignore task-irrelevant information. These abilities have been associated with brain oscillations, especially parietal gamma and alpha bands, but it is yet unknown whether these oscillations also modulate attention and inhibitory abilities. To test this, we compared parietal gamma-transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to alpha-tACS and to a non-stimulation condition (Sham) in 51 young participants. Stimulation was coupled with a WM task probing memory-based attention and inhibitory abilities by means of probabilistic retrospective cues, including informative (valid), uninformative (invalid) and neutral. Our results show that relative to alpha and sham stimulation, parietal gamma-tACS significantly increased working memory recall precision. Additional post hoc analyses also revealed strong individual variability before and following stimulation; low-baseline performers showed no significant changes in performance following both gamma and alpha-tACS relative to sham. In contrast, in high-baseline performers gamma- (but not alpha) tACS selectively and significantly improved misbinding-feature errors as well as memory precision, particularly in uninformative (invalid) cues which rely more strongly on attentional abilities. We concluded that parietal gamma oscillations, therefore, modulate working memory recall processes, although baseline performance may further influence the effect of stimulation.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-021-06051-6
Additional Information:	Funding: This work was supported by a British Academy Grant (SG090611) and BIAL Foundation Grant. We thank Katherine Warburton and Sonia Singh for help with data collection.
Keywords:	Working memory, Attention, Inhibition, Gamma oscillations, tACS
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Dates:	Date Event 25 January 2021 Accepted 5 July 2021 Published Online September 2021 Published
Item ID:	37842
Date Deposited:	08 Nov 2024 16:33
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2024 16:37
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/37842

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