Enhancing spatial reasoning by anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over the right posterior parietal cortex

Spatial reasoning is essential for an agent's navigation and the cognitive processing of abstract arrangements. Meta-analyses of neuroimaging data reveal that both the right posterior parietal cortex and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PPC and DLPFC, respectively) show increased activation during spatial relational reasoning. To investigate whether participants' reasoning performance can be modified and potentially enhanced, anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was applied over either region. 51 healthy adult participants solved spatial reasoning problems after the application of either anodal tDCS over the right PPC, the left DLPFC or a sham stimulation. We expect anodal stimulation to enhance cortical excitability which would be reflected by enhanced reasoning performance in participants receiving stimulation. The results demonstrate that anodal stimulation applied over the right PPC enhances participants' performance in indeterminate reasoning problems, compared to sham and anodal stimulation over the left DLPFC. This finding is highly relevant for clarifying the cognitive mechanisms of relational reasoning and for clinical applications, e.g., enhancing or restoring higher cognitive functions for spatial representation and reasoning.