ArticleFrontiers in neuroscience2020
Left Prefrontal Cortex Supports the Recognition of Meaningful Patterns in Ambiguous Stimuli.
Article in Frontiers in neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Interactions between faces and visual context in emotion perception: A meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Pooled it
- Combined fMRI and eye-tracking evidence on the neural processing of visual ambiguity in photographic aesthetics.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Brain-wide pleiotropy investigation of alcohol drinking and tobacco smoking behaviors.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- HD-tDCS to the lateral occipital complex improves haptic object recognition.Experimental brain research · 2024Article
- Long-term effects of multiple concussions on prefrontal cortex oxygenation during neurovascular coupling activation in retired male contact sport athletes.Current research in physiology · 2022Article
- Extinction and discrimination in a Bayesian model of context fear conditioning (BaconX).Hippocampus · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Processing of ambiguous visual stimuli has been associated with an increased activation of the left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in neuroimaging studies. Nevertheless, the functional role of prefrontal activity in this process is not fully understood. In this experiment we asked participants to evaluate ambiguous inkblots from the Rorschach test, while stimulating the left lateral PFC using excitatory anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In addition, visual insight ability was assessed as a control measure requiring visual and conceptual restructuring and convergent thinking rather than divergent idea generation employed to interpret the equivocal Rorschach inkblots. Using a randomized double-blind design, we demonstrated that anodal tDCS increased the number of meaningful patterns recognized in the inkblots but had no significant effect on visual insight. These findings support the role of left lateral PFC in the processing of ambiguous visual information and object recognition. More generally, we discuss that the PFC may be involved in the mechanisms supporting the activation of stored visual and semantic representations in order to compensate for less informative bottom-up inputs and thus facilitate flexible cognition and idea generation.
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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.