, 2013). Thus, recurrent activity between sensory and motor areas informs the motor response and modulates the interpretation of incoming sensory information. In addition, improvements on a sensory discrimination task reflect both perceptual learning (the increased ability to discriminate the specific

trained stimuli) and procedural learning (understanding and dealing with the sequence of events in each trial, including formulating a decision) (Ortiz & Wright, 2009). Although fine motor skill was not required for the manual response (clicking the left or right mouse button) in the task used here, increasing the excitability of motor cortex could enhance learning of other aspects of the procedural component of the perceptual High Content Screening www.selleckchem.com/screening/fda-approved-drug-library.html judgment task. Increasing excitability of motor cortex might therefore enhance both the recurrent processing of sensory input and the procedural component of perceptual learning. A limitation of the current study is that only the effects of anodal tDCS on frequency discrimination were examined. It is possible that cathodal tDCS would enhance frequency discrimination and auditory learning, as cathodal and anodal stimulation have opposite effects on cortical excitability. Some previous studies of tDCS have, however, reported effects on visual function of one polarity of stimulation but not the other. Cathodal tDCS enhances global motion processing while anodal stimulation has no effects PJ34 HCl (Antal et al.,

2004c), and visual attention is similarly enhanced by cathodal stimulation with no effect of anodal stimulation

(Moos et al., 2012). In contrast, cathodal tDCS has no effect on contrast discrimination, which is enhanced by anodal stimulation (Olma et al., 2011). The persistent effect of tDCS on frequency discrimination thresholds reported here is a novel finding; previous studies of the effect of tDCS on perception have not looked for lasting effects (Antal et al., 2004b; Mathys et al., 2010). In a similar way to the current study, altering cortical excitability by low- and high-frequency alternation of visual stimulation has been reported to change visual discrimination thresholds for up to 10 days (Beste et al., 2011). Animal studies have shown that inducing neuronal depolarization with a direct current applied to the cortex can cause persistent synaptic changes with increased calcium ion and cyclic AMP levels, which are associated with cortical plasticity (Hattori et al., 1990; Moriwaki, 1991; Islam et al., 1995). This is consistent with extensive neurophysiological findings showing that frequency discrimination training causes long-term synaptic changes in neurons in primary auditory cortex (Weinberger & Diamond, 1987; Recanzone et al., 1993; Bosnyak & Gander, 2007). The effects of tDCS over motor cortex, measured by the amplitude of motor-evoked potentials elicited by transcranial magnetic stimulation, typically persist for up to about 90 min (Nitsche & Paulus, 2001).