Improving Soldier Procedural Skill Acquisition Through HD-tDCS
Results from an ‘omnibus’ meta-analytic model over all studies/effects. Point estimates of posterior mean effects are shown for each study parameter; thin lines give the full extent of the posterior, while bold lines give 90% credibility intervals (analogous to confidence intervals in frequentist statistics, but considered to be more numerically-stable than 95% intervals).
Throughout both training and the execution of their duties on the battlefield, Soldiers are asked to learn and perform a number of complex tasks. Our lab has traditionally sought to understand the cognitive and neural mechanisms of decision-making behaviors, particularly when the optimal outcome depends on one’s ability to flexibly-adapt his/her behavior under conditions of varying uncertainty; however, many tasks that Soldiers perform require adherence to particular protocols, where deviations from the proper procedure can have profoundly consequential results—some of which may be fatal. The history of procedural learning and skill acquisition research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience is rich and vast. More recently, the advent of noninvasive neurostimulation techniques has allowed us to investigate potential means of enhancing these behaviors by modifying activity in specific task-related regions of the brain. While the promise of neurostimulation continues to entice the neuroscientific community, these efforts have often been frustrated by a series of inconsistent results and uncertainty over the optimal means of modulating regional brain activity. Similarly, many laboratory studies rely on tightly-controlled abstractions of behavior that scarcely-resemble the real-world process of learning and performing complex procedural skills—especially those that are most relevant to Soldiers. Therefore, with this project we will begin to tackle both of these limitations through a comprehensive meta-analysis of the neurostimulation literature and designing an ecologically-valid experiment aimed at improving procedural skill acquisition via neurostimulation.
