Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to Modulate Performance during a Multimodal Auditory and Visual Vigilance Task
Abstract
Detecting infrequent, low-salience targets is a critical task in many mentally fatiguing jobs, such as sonar monitoring. Vigilance is necessary for optimal performance on these tasks, as watch shifts can last several hours. The ability to maintain attention over time, i.e. vigilance, can degrade in as little as ten minutes. This decrement is often attributed to limited cognitive resources and the subsequent mental fatigue, and manifests as increased target misses and longer reaction times. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may serve as a countermeasure to vigilance decrement. Research shows that tDCS to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) can be used to improve performance on visually-based vigilance tasks, but the use of tDCS for auditory or multisensory (visual and auditory) vigilance tasks has been underexplored. We investigated the effectiveness of tDCS to the DLPFC for improving vigilance on visual-only, auditory-only, and multimodal auditory-visual vigilance tasks. Results indicate that anodal tDCS improved visual response times, but stimulation also decreased auditory sensitivity and specificity. For the multimodal auditory-visual vigilance task, the effects of anodal tDCS were not significantly different from sham tDCS, revealing differential effects of anodal tDCS on varying task modalities and outcome measures.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 28, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1186749
Entities
People
- Chad Peltier
- Jennifer F. Louie
- Justin D. Handy
- Krystina Diaz
- Sylvia Guillory
Organizations
- Leidos
- Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory