TMS of Visual Working Memory

NYU Langone Health

Status: Withdrawn

Conditions: Occipital Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Treatments: Device: Sham TMS condition; Device: Online TMS condition; Device: OffLine TMS Condition

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02927470

15-00666

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to understand how the brain allows individuals to keep information "in mind" over brief intervals. During the experiment, participants will be asked to maintain fixation while they attend to and remember different visual stimuli (e.g., the location of a dot on the screen, the color of a circle, the orientation of a line, the speed of a group of moving dots) on a computer monitor. Participants will make decisions about these visual stimuli and indicate their decisions by pressing buttons or making eye movements. Through the use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) investigators hope to understand the contributions of different anatomical areas while subjects perform this task.

Full description

This study will use a within subject design in which each participant will perform a working memory task combined with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. TMS will be applied in three possible procedures, 1) Online TMS, 2) Offline TMS and 3) Sham TMS. All subjects will be given two trials within their one session, one of which will be sham TMS for all subjects and another of which will be randomly assigned to either Online or Offline TMS. Trials order will be randomly counterbalanced across subjects, who will be blind to the treatment of frontal vs. sham TMS (independent variable). Participants will be randomized into either the online or offline groups by computer generated lists to ensure equal numbers of participants in each condition. Half of the subjects will receive online TMS (online group) and half will receive offline TMS (offline group). Subjects will be randomly assigned to one of the two groups. The dependent variables will be performance accuracy and reaction time on the working memory task. By utilizing online and offline TMS, investigators will be able to explore whether frontal cortex is involved transiently in visual working memory or persistently throughout the task.

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 65 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Neurologically healthy individuals will be recruited.

Exclusion criteria

• Individuals with neurological issues (e.g., history of seizures, neurosurgery, brain trauma) will be excluded.
• Women of childbearing potential will be told that although there are no known risks of the procedure to the unborn fetus, they should not take part in the study if they are or might be pregnant.
• Minors and the elderly will be excluded.
• Individuals who are on medications that heighten the risk of TMS adverse events will be excluded.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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0 participants in 1 patient group

Working memory task

Experimental group

Description:

Simple visual stimuli (e.g., dots, colors, lines) will be presented on a computer monitor. The positions of the stimuli must be attended and remembered and decisions about the stimuli and/or their locations must be made. Memory will be probed with a button press or an eye movement towards the remembered locations.

Treatment:

Device: Online TMS condition

Device: OffLine TMS Condition

Device: Sham TMS condition