Parietal transcranial random noise stimulation improves long-term visual acquisition of foreign vocabulary

Pasqualotto, Achille and Kobanbay, Begüm and Proulx, Michael J. (2014) Parietal transcranial random noise stimulation improves long-term visual acquisition of foreign vocabulary. In: 37th European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP), Belgrade, Serbia

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Abstract

The acquisition of a foreign language is a complex task and previous research investigated which learning method could yield the best results in terms of long-term acquisition. In particular, past studies stressed the importance of the testing phase for memory consolidation. There is evidence that a fronto-parietal circuitry is involved in language processing and comprehension, but it is still unknown which specific portion is crucial for foreign vocabulary acquisition, and this has never been directly assessed by using transcranial random noise stimulation, or tRNS. This type of neural stimulation enhances activity in the underlying cortex. In our study we tested the acquisition of visually presented Swahili vocabulary while three groups of participants were stimulated by tRNS over frontal or parietal lobes, plus a placebo condition. Vocabulary acquisition was tested both immediately and after seven days. We found that parietal, but not frontal, stimulation significantly improved the memory performance compared to the placebo condition both immediately and in the long-term. These results suggest that the parietal cortex is more directly involved in the consolidation of memory for foreign vocabulary than would have been previously expected.
Item Type: Papers in Conference Proceedings
Subjects: Q Science > Q Science (General)
Divisions: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences > Academic programs > Cultural Studies
Depositing User: Achille Pasqualotto
Date Deposited: 08 Dec 2014 11:42
Last Modified: 26 Apr 2022 09:15
URI: https://research.sabanciuniv.edu/id/eprint/24489

Actions (login required)

View Item
View Item