Tagging motor memories with transcranial direct current stimulation allows later artificially-controlled retrieval

Abstract
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Abstract

We demonstrate that human motor memories can be artificially tagged and later retrieved by noninvasive transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS). Participants learned to adapt reaching movements to two conflicting dynamical environments that were each associated with a different tDCS polarity (anodal or cathodal tDCS) on the sensorimotor cortex. That is, we sought to determine whether divergent background activity levels within the sensorimotor cortex (anodal: higher activity; cathodal: lower activity) give rise to distinct motor memories. After a training session, application of each tDCS polarity automatically resulted in the retrieval of the motor memory corresponding to that polarity. These results reveal that artificial modulation of neural activity in the sensorimotor cortex through tDCS can act as a context for the formation and recollection of motor memories.

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Daichi Nozaki

Division of Physical and Health Education, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

For correspondence
nozaki@p.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1338-8337
Atsushi Yokoi

The Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7428-3344
Takahiro Kimura

Research Institute, Kochi University of Technology, Kami City, Japan

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Masaya Hirashima

Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Suita, Japan

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Jean-Jacques Orban de Xivry

Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics, and Applied Mathematics, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4603-7939

Funding

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (KAKENHI A26242062)

Daichi Nozaki
Masaya Hirashima

NEXT Program (LS034)

Daichi Nozaki

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Japan-Belgium Research Cooperative Program)

Daichi Nozaki
Jean-Jacques Orban de Xivry

Brains Back to Brussels fellowship

Jean-Jacques Orban de Xivry

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: The experiments were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The ethics committee from The University of Tokyo approved all experimental procedures. Prior to the experiments, participants provided informed consent.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.