ArticleCurrent biology : CB2010
Cholinergic enhancement augments magnitude and specificity of visual perceptual learning in healthy humans.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers.
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Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 89 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effect of muscarinic blockade on the speed of attention shifting, read-out delays and learning.Psychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Durable recovery from amblyopia with donepezil.Scientific reports · 2023Trial
- Boosting Learning Efficacy with Noninvasive Brain Stimulation in Intact and Brain-Damaged Humans.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2019Trial
- Differential effect of an anticholinergic antidepressant on sleep-dependent memory consolidation.Sleep · 2014Trial
- Free energy, precision and learning: the role of cholinergic neuromodulation.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2013Trial
- Testosterone induces off-line perceptual learning.Psychopharmacology · 2012Trial
- Adaptive arousal regulation: Pharmacologically shifting the peak of the Yerkes-Dodson curve by catecholaminergic enhancement of arousal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Improving iconic memory through contrast detection training with HOA-corrected vision.Fundamental research · 2024Article
- Cholinergic modulation of sensory perception and plasticity.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Comprehensive review of amblyopia: Types and management.Indian journal of ophthalmology · 2023Review
- Article
- Configuration perceptual learning and its relationship with element perceptual learning.Journal of vision · 2022Article
- Metaplasticity: a key to visual recovery from amblyopia in adulthood?Current opinion in ophthalmology · 2022Review
- Current directions in visual perceptual learning.Nature reviews psychology · 2022Article
- Awake suppression after brief exposure to a familiar stimulus.Communications biology · 2021Article
- An update on pharmacological treatment options for amblyopia.International ophthalmology · 2020Review
- Rethinking amblyopia 2020.Vision research · 2020Review
- New insights into cortical development and plasticity: from molecules to behavior.Current opinion in physiology · 2020Article
- Cholinergic Modulation of Binocular Vision.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020Article
- Transient cholinergic enhancement does not significantly affect either the magnitude or selectivity of perceptual learning of visual texture discrimination.Journal of vision · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Learning through experience underlies the ability to adapt to novel tasks and unfamiliar environments. However, learning must be regulated so that relevant aspects of the environment are selectively encoded. Acetylcholine (ACh) has been suggested to regulate learning by enhancing the responses of sensory cortical neurons to behaviorally relevant stimuli. In this study, we increased synaptic levels of ACh in the brains of healthy human subjects with the cholinesterase inhibitor donepezil (trade name: Aricept) and measured the effects of this cholinergic enhancement on visual perceptual learning. Each subject completed two 5 day courses of training on a motion direction discrimination task, once while ingesting 5 mg of donepezil before every training session and once while placebo was administered. We found that cholinergic enhancement augmented perceptual learning for stimuli having the same direction of motion and visual field location used during training. In addition, perceptual learning with donepezil was more selective to the trained direction of motion and visual field location. These results, combined with previous studies demonstrating an increase in neuronal selectivity following cholinergic enhancement, suggest a possible mechanism by which ACh augments neural plasticity by directing activity to populations of neurons that encode behaviorally relevant stimulus features.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.