When behaving in a goal-directed manner, the ability to suppress specific inappropriate actions is crucial to human motor function. Motor inhibition, or the repression of specific actions prior to and during onset of a motor command, allows humans to quickly respond and adapt their decisions to unexpected changes within an environment. Research investigating the faciliatory effects of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive stimulation technique that can potentially modulate the activity of target regions of the brain, on inhibition have been well-documented in the use of conventional or 1x1 tDCS devices. However, the the advent of High-Definition tDCS (HD-tDCS), which is claimed to enhance spatial precision through the usage of multiple smaller electrodes, has led to increased interest in its effects on motor inhibition and related cognitive processes. HD-tDCS may offer a more targeted approach to modulating neural circuits involved in motor planning and inhibitory control, such as the pre-Supplementary Motor Area (pre-SMA) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). This study aims to investigate the effects of anodal HD-tDCS over the pre-SMA on motor inhibition using the stop-signal task. By examining response times, error rates, and Stop Signal Reaction Time (SSRT), we seek to understand the potential advantages of HD-tDCS in modulating motor-related cognitive processes. These findings have implications for refining brain stimulation techniques and developing targeted interventions for conditions involving impaired inhibitory control.

After answering a test question, feedback of the correct answer provided after a brief delay can be more beneficial to learning than feedback provided immediately (Brackbill & Kappy, 1962; Kulhavy & Anderson, 1972). Several theoretical models have been proposed to explain this delay-of-feedback benefit, with the most well supported being that delaying feedback promotes anticipation of the correct answer, which has been examined using curiosity as a measure of answer anticipation (Mullaney et al. 2014). The present study tested this model across two task designs, one designed to elicit epistemic curiosity, and one designed to elicit perceptual curiosity, to determine if the relationship between curiosity and feedback delay is type-dependent. In Task 1, participants answered trivia questions, reported their subjective level of curiosity to know the answer, and then received correct answer feedback after a variable delay (0s, 4s, or 8s). Task 2 was identical to Task 1, except that participants learned and were tested on the identities of blurred pictures, rather than trivia question answers. A subsequent learning retention test demonstrated a significant effect of curiosity, but not feedback delay, on performance in the trivia task, and no significant effect of curiosity, but a negative effect of feedback delay, on performance in the blurred pictures task. Neither task found a significant interaction effect between curiosity and delay group, which fails to support the answer anticipation model of the delay-of-feedback benefit.

Pain has been found in previous research to have a noticeable effect on people’s ability to perform creative tasks. While limited studies in this field exist, most of this work has focused on convergent thinking through the use of compound remote associates tasks (CRAT). In order to investigate how acute pain might affect divergent creative cognition involving a wider answer space, the current study was conducted using an alternate uses task (AUT) during an algometer-based pain intervention. It was found that acute pain did not have a significant effect on accuracy in the CRAT nor on problem solving abilities in the AUT but notably, participants in the pain condition were more likely to say that they solved problems in the CRAT through insight rather than by an analytical approach. This work demonstrates the need for more research in this field to better understand the relationship between creative cognition and pain.