Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 28, 2025
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation tDCS for Memory Enhancement
Published on: September 18, 2021
Personalized brain stimulation of memory networks
Robin F H Cash1, Joshua Hendrikse2, Kavisha B Fernando3
1Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia; Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia.
Background:
The finding that transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can enhance memory performance via stimulation of parietal sites within the Cortical-Hippocampal Network counts as one of the most exciting findings in this field in the past decade. However, the first independent effort aiming to fully replicate this finding found no discernible influence of TMS on memory performance.
Objective:
We examined whether this might relate to interindividual spatial variation in brain connectivity architecture, and the capacity of personalisation methodologies to overcome the noise inherent across independent scanners and cohorts.
Methods:
We implemented recently detailed personalisation methodology to retrospectively compute individual-specific parietal targets and then examined relation to TMS outcomes.
Results:
Closer proximity between actual and novel fMRI-personalized targets associated with greater improvement in memory performance.
Conclusion:
These findings demonstrate the potential importance of aligning brain stimulation targets according to individual-specific differences in brain connectivity, and extend upon recent findings in prefrontal cortex.
