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Examining Posterior Parietal Cortex Contributions to Cognitive Flexibility With Noninvasive Electric Brain Stimulation

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Kate Chin¹ (), Kent Hubert², Evangelia G. Chrysikou¹; ¹Drexel University, ²University of Arkansas

Creativity, the ability to produce novel and useful ideas, has emerged as an area of research focus for cognitive neuroscience. In this project, we examine the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)—a noninvasive method using weak electrical currents to modulate brain activity—on cognitive flexibility. Although most creativity tasks emphasize bottom-up processes (building ideas from spontaneous associations), real-world problem solving also relies on top-down processing (applying prior knowledge) to achieve goals. To engage both types of processing, we pioneered a new task, the Alternative Objects Task (AOT), wherein participants are asked to satisfy goals with a common or an uncommon object. In prior research, we have shown that cathodal tDCS over the left prefrontal cortex enhanced response fluency on this task, whereas anodal tDCS elicited the opposite effect. Guided by these prior results and functional neuroimaging findings, here, we employed tDCS over the left parietal cortex to investigate causally the impact of transient changes in activity in this region for problem solving performance on the AOT. Participants were presented with a series of goals and generated either a common or an uncommon object that could satisfy each, while undergoing either excitatory (anodal), inhibitory (cathodal), or sham 4×1 high-definition tDCS over left posterior parietal cortex. Analyses of variance on the effect of tDCS on response fluency, reaction times, and semantic distance revealed interactions between task and stimulation type across measures and highlight how goal-orientation during cognitive flexibility may differentially rely on posterior parietal cortex.

Topic Area: THINKING: Problem solving