Prefrontal transcranial direct current stimulation facilitates affective flexibility.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Affective flexibility, the ability to switch between emotional and non-emotional tasks, is crucial for emotion regulation.
• Impaired affective flexibility is observed in various emotional disorders, highlighting the need for effective interventions.
• Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive neurostimulation technique with potential therapeutic applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of anodal tDCS on the right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on affective flexibility in healthy volunteers.
• To determine if tDCS can modulate the ability to switch between emotional and non-emotional task-sets.
• To explore the potential of tDCS as a tool to improve emotion regulation strategies.

Main Methods:

• Healthy participants received anodal tDCS over the right DLPFC, left DLPFC, or sham stimulation.
• Participants performed an affective-switching task involving judgments of facial emotions and gender.
• Behavioral performance, including response times and switch costs, was analyzed.

Main Results:

• Anodal tDCS over the right DLPFC accelerated responses in the non-emotional (gender) task when it followed an emotional task.
• Right DLPFC tDCS reduced the cognitive cost of switching away from emotional judgments.
• Left DLPFC tDCS facilitated switching towards emotional judgments, suggesting distinct roles for each hemisphere in affective flexibility.

Conclusions:

• tDCS applied to the DLPFC can modulate affective flexibility.
• Right DLPFC stimulation appears particularly effective in facilitating disengagement from emotional task-sets.
• These findings suggest that tDCS-based interventions targeting affective switching may hold promise for therapeutic protocols in emotional disorders.