Bursts of transcranial electrical stimulation increase arousal in a continuous performance test

We developed 3 experiments: Experiment 1 validated the behavioural task, which was an adapted version of the continuous performance test. Experiment 2 aimed to show the task sensitivity to the level of activation. The results confirmed that the task was sensitive enough to reveal modulations of arousal. In Experiment 3, we applied bursts of tES concurrent with the onset of the relevant stimuli of the task to increase the physiological phasic activation of arousal. The skin conductance response was recorded during the experiment in addition to the RTs. The results showed a reduction of RTs and a concurrent increase in skin conductance during the real stimulation condition, which is consistent with a general increase in arousal. In all, these data support the effectiveness of bursts of tES in modulating arousal.