Trial reportThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2013
The mental cost of cognitive enhancement.
Trial report in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 78 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
78 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Noninvasive brain stimulation in children and adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN · 2021Pooled it
- Evidence against benefits from cognitive training and transcranial direct current stimulation in healthy older adults.Nature human behaviour · 2021Trial
- Contrasting effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on central and peripheral visual fields.Experimental brain research · 2015Trial
- Transcranial direct current stimulation can selectively affect different processing channels in human visual cortex.Experimental brain research · 2015Trial
- Trial
- Medial Frontal Theta Reduction Impairs Rule Switching via Prediction Error.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Long-term use of tDCS-clinical and ethical considerations.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Effects on nonverbal numerical acuity performance after a single-session transient random noise stimulation over the intraparietal sulcus or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Attempting to counteract vigilance decrement in older adults with brain stimulation.Frontiers in neuroergonomics · 2023Article
- Understanding the Effects of Transcranial Electrical Stimulation in Numerical Cognition: A Systematic Review for Clinical Translation.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Review
- Focusing on cognitive potential as the bright side of mental atypicality.Communications biology · 2022Review
- Transcranial electric stimulation as a neural interface to gain insight on human brain functions: current knowledge and future perspective.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2022Review
- Non-invasive brain stimulation and neuroenhancement.Clinical neurophysiology practice · 2022Review
- Review
- Acceptability of Neuroscientific Interventions in Education.Science and engineering ethics · 2021Article
- The Downsides of Cognitive Enhancement.The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry · 2021Article
- The Effect of Transcranial Random Noise Stimulation on Cognitive Training Outcome in Healthy Aging.Frontiers in neurology · 2021Article
- Is It Possible to Improve Working Memory With Prefrontal tDCS? Bridging Currents to Working Memory Models.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Functional Effects of Bilateral Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Modulation During Sequential Decision-Making: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study With Offline Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
- Article
18 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Noninvasive brain stimulation provides a potential tool for affecting brain functions in the typical and atypical brain and offers in several cases an alternative to pharmaceutical intervention. Some studies have suggested that transcranial electrical stimulation (TES), a form of noninvasive brain stimulation, can also be used to enhance cognitive performance. Critically, research so far has primarily focused on optimizing protocols for effective stimulation, or assessing potential physical side effects of TES while neglecting the possibility of cognitive side effects. We assessed this possibility by targeting the high-level cognitive abilities of learning and automaticity in the mathematical domain. Notably, learning and automaticity represent critical abilities for potential cognitive enhancement in typical and atypical populations. Over 6 d, healthy human adults underwent cognitive training on a new numerical notation while receiving TES to the posterior parietal cortex or the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Stimulation to the the posterior parietal cortex facilitated numerical learning, whereas automaticity for the learned material was impaired. In contrast, stimulation to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex impaired the learning process, whereas automaticity for the learned material was enhanced. The observed double dissociation indicates that cognitive enhancement through TES can occur at the expense of other cognitive functions. These findings have important implications for the future use of enhancement technologies for neurointervention and performance improvement in healthy populations.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.