Enhancing value-based learning by focalized tDCS (transcranial direct current stimulation)

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Adaptive behaviour requires individuals to learn and represent contingencies between their choices and the outcomes of their decisions to adjust behaviour according to situational demands. Such value-based learning also underlies sequential decision making, in which the outcome of a current choice only becomes apparent after a few decision stages. Value-based learning is crucial for adapting to changing environments throughout life and is known to decline in aging and aging-associated diseases. Given that value-based sequential decision is an ecologically relevant task in everyday life for people of different ages, this project will specifically investigate the neural mechanisms and predictors underlying enhancement of this process by individualized, focal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In the long-run, outcomes of this project will contribute to improving treatment of patients with neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., dementia and its precursors) for whom the abilities of value-based learning and decision making are also impaired. Within the broader context of the Research Unit, the present study is one of eight empirical projects investigating tDCS effects on learning and memory formation across functional domains and the healthy human lifespan. The highly systematic and coordinated approach pursued by these empirical projects will allow us, for the first time, to analyse the underlying neural mechanisms and predictors of behavioural stimulation response not only within each project, but also coordinate with method-oriented projects in the research unit to study relations between different tasks and functional domains.This project will contribute unique information on how tDCS modulates value-based sequential decision making, thereby complementing the investigation of tDCS-induced enhancement of learning-based adaptive control in Project 7 (PI Fischer). Collectively, the results of the empirical projects of the Research Unit will increase our current understanding of tDCS-induced neural network effects, their regional specificity, the mechanisms underlying inter-individual variability of stimulation effects, and potential changes due to chronological age. From a methodological point of view, data acquired in these projects will contribute to optimizing and validating biophysical models of current flow (in P9 and P10), thereby advancing future experimental and translational applications of tDCS in health and disease.