“These new findings provide evidence that long-term memory representations can also underlie our ability to rapidly configure attention to focus on certain objects, and that long-term memory performance can be sharply accelerated using electrical stimulation.”

Researchers have long known that attention could be tuned, like a radio dial, to hone in on specific features, but how and where in the brain this tuning occurs has remained an open question.

By passing very weak electrical current through the brains of healthy volunteers using a process called transcranial direct-current stimulation, researchers were able to cause the volunteers to much more quickly find target objects embedded in arrays of distracting objects. The study showed that after 20 minutes of passing safe levels of weak electrical current through electrodes placed on the head, the volunteers were able to more effectively focus attention on the searched-for targets, with dramatic increases in speed.

via Electrical Stimulation ‘Tunes’ Visual Attention Using Long-Term Memory | Lab Manager.