Effects of Brain-stimulation on Metamemory Monitoring and Control

Healthy Clinical Trial

— FOKhint  

Official title:

Effects of Brain-stimulation on Memory and Memory Awareness

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Active, not recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT03693729
• Other study ID #: BrooklynC
• Secondary ID: SC3GM121192
• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: September 3, 2018
• Est. completion date: June 30, 2022

Study information

• Verified date: July 2020
• Source: Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

When people learn and remember information, it is often accompanied by a feeling of subjective confidence about whether or not information has been learned and accurately remembered. These subjective feelings of confidence are often related to actual memory performance, but are sometimes incorrect. The investigators have previously shown that applying high definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex leads to more accurate feelings of subjective confidence, at least when subjects are asked for their confidence about future memory performance. Accurate confidence judgments are useful in that they may later subsequent behavior, and inaccurate ones may be costly. For example, a student who erroneously believes that studied material was learned may stop studying and not do well on a test. Individuals who have a feeling-of-knowing about the answer to a general knowledge question will continue to search their memory, whereas individuals who do not have a feeling-of-knowing will stop searching their memory. Individuals who are confident they know the answer to a question are more likely to answer it. In this study, the experimenters are testing the effects of brain stimulation on subjective awareness of memory (termed metamemory monitoring) and how people use those subjective judgments (termed metamemory control). The approach taken is to have participants visit the laboratory on 3 visits and receive brain stimulation while completing memory and metamemory tasks.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Enrollment: 216
• Est. completion date: June 30, 2022
• Est. primary completion date: June 30, 2022
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 35 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Healthy, right-handed adults ages 18-35. English spoken since age 5. Normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Participants will be excluded if they have chronic skin disease or a medical skin condition, or an unhealed open wound on the scalp, face, neck, or forehead near the electrode location.

• Participants will be excluded if they self-report significant medical, neurological, or psychiatric illness and/or a history of substance abuse

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Healthy

Intervention

Device:
• HD-tDCS
Participants will complete a metamemory and memory task

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	Brooklyn College	Brooklyn	New York

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York	National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Memory Control Advantage Index	This indexes the memory advantage for choosing which general knowledge question one receives a hint about the answer to versus having the experimenter choose which general knowledge question one receives a hint about the answer. The investigators will subtract the proportion of correctly recognized general knowledge answers for experimenter-chosen questions from the proportion correctly recognized for participant-chosen questions	Through study completion, an average of 3 weeks
Secondary	semantic recognition as assessed by a general knowledge task	Differences in recognition are compared between each condition (each active HD-tDCS and sham).	Through study completion, an average of 3 weeks
Secondary	semantic recall as assessed by a general knowledge task	Differences in recall are compared between each condition (each active HD-tDCS and sham).	Through study completion, an average of 3 weeks
Secondary	Feeling-of-knowing ratings and their accuracy	Feeling of knowing ratings are given on a scale. To assess the accuracy of these ratings, the subjective ratings are compared to objective accuracy, using signal detection based measures. Differences in feeling-of-knowing ratings and their accuracy are compared between each condition (each active HD-tDCS and sham).	Through study completion, an average of 3 weeks