Polarity-specific transcranial direct current stimulation disrupts auditory pitch learning

Reiko Matsushita, Jamila Andoh, Robert J. Zatorre

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is attracting increasing interest because of its potential for therapeutic use. While its effects have been investigated mainly with motor and visual tasks, less is known in the auditory domain. Past tDCS studies with auditory tasks demonstrated various behavioral outcomes, possibly due to differences in stimulation parameters, task-induced brain activity, or task measurements used in each study. Further research, using well-validated tasks is therefore required for clarification of behavioral effects of tDCS on the auditory system. Here, we took advantage of findings from a prior functional magnetic resonance imaging study, which demonstrated that the right auditory cortex is modulated during fine-grained pitch learning of microtonal melodic patterns. Targeting the right auditory cortex with tDCS using this same task thus allowed us to test the hypothesis that this region is causally involved in pitch learning. Participants in the current study were trained for 3 days while we measured pitch discrimination thresholds using microtonal melodies on each day using a psychophysical staircase procedure. We administered anodal, cathodal, or sham tDCS to three groups of participants over the right auditory cortex on the second day of training during performance of the task. Both the sham and the cathodal groups showed the expected significant learning effect (decreased pitch threshold) over the 3 days of training; in contrast we observed a blocking effect of anodal tDCS on auditory pitch learning, such that this group showed no significant change in thresholds over the 3 days. The results support a causal role for the right auditory cortex in pitch discrimination learning.