Cognitive psychology

Neuroscience

Cognition

Psychiatry

Brain stimulation

Economics

Stimulation

Anxiety

Dopamine

Stroop effect

Psychology

Task (project management)

Management

Striatum

Nature Biomedical Engineering

Deficits in cognitive control—that is, in the ability to withhold a default pre-potent response in favour of a more adaptive choice—are common in depression, anxiety, addiction and other mental disorders. Here we report proof-of-concept evidence that, in participants undergoing intracranial epilepsy monitoring, closed-loop direct stimulation of the internal capsule or striatum, especially the dorsal sites, enhances the participants’ cognitive control during a conflict task. We also show that closed-loop stimulation upon the detection of lapses in cognitive control produced larger behavioural changes than open-loop stimulation, and that task performance for single trials can be directly decoded from the activity of a small number of electrodes via neural features that are compatible with existing closed-loop brain implants. Closed-loop enhancement of cognitive control might remediate underlying cognitive deficits and aid the treatment of severe mental disorders. Closed-loop electrical stimulation of the internal capsule of participants undergoing intracranial epilepsy monitoring improved the participants’ performance on a cognitive conflict task, and performance could be decoded from electrode activity.

Closed-loop enhancement and neural decoding of cognitive control in humans