Balanced bifrontal transcranial direct current stimulation enhances working memory in adults with high-functioning autism: a sham-controlled crossover study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Working memory (WM) often is impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Such impairment may underlie core deficits in cognition and social functioning. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been shown to enhance WM in both healthy adults and clinical populations, but its efficacy in ASD is unknown. We predicted that bifrontal tDCS would improve WM performances of adults with high-functioning autism during active stimulation compared to sham stimulation and that such enhancement would generalize to an untrained task.

Methods

Twelve adults with high-functioning ASD engaged in a battery of WM tasks that included backward spatial span, backward digit span, spatial n-back and letter n-back. While engaged, 40 min of 1.5 mA bifrontal stimulati

SUBMITTER: van Steenburgh JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5534041 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature