Marlies E van Bochove, Leen De Taeye, Robrecht Raedt, Kristl Vonck, Alfred Meurs, Paul Boon, Ine Dauwe, Wim Notebaert, Tom Verguts
Suppressing irrelevant information in decision making is an essential everyday skill. We studied whether this ability could be improved in epileptic patients during vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). VNS is known to increase norepinephrine (NE) in the brain. NE is thought to improve several aspects of cognitive control, including the suppression of irrelevant information. Nineteen epileptic VNS patients executed the Eriksen flanker task twice, both during on and off stimulation. Distractor interference was indexed by the congruency effect, a standard empirical marker of cognitive control...
March 21, 2018: International Journal of Psychophysiology