Archival ReportFrontal Cortex Stimulation Reduces Vigilance to Threat: Implications for the Treatment of Depression and Anxiety
Section snippets
Participants
Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Oxford Central University Ethics Committee (MSD-IDREC-C1-2013-03CUREC). Sixty healthy participants (aged 18–45, 30 female participants) were recruited (see the Supplement for more details).
Design
This study used a between-groups double-blind design with three groups of 20 participants randomized to each condition (active bipolar-balanced DLPFC tDCS, active bipolar-unbalanced DLPFC tDCS, or sham tDCS) with the sham condition randomized across both
Group Matching
The groups did not differ in terms of gender, age, highest education level, personality profile, and baseline mood questionnaire measures (see Table 1 and the Supplement).
Questionnaire Based Measurements
Transcranial direct current stimulation did not significantly affect the mood questionnaire measures (see Table 1 and Supplemental Information).
Behavioral Measurements
Transcranial direct current stimulation did not significantly alter facial expression recognition, emotional categorization, or emotional memory (Supplement).
Faces Dot-Probe Tasks.
Discussion
These findings provide the first experimental evidence that modulating activity in the DLPFC leads to reduced vigilance to threatening stimuli. This study is also the first to directly compare the two most common electrode montages used for DLPFC tDCS, with the results favoring the bipolar-balanced montage. In this study, the group receiving sham stimulation displayed the expected attentional bias toward fearful faces on short stimulus duration trials. Healthy participants typically show this
Acknowledgments and Disclosures
MI is supported by a Medical Research Council studentship and research support grant.
MI and JO report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest. PJC has acted as a paid advisor for Lundbeck. CJH has received consultancy income from P1vital, Lundbeck, and Servier. She is a director of Oxford Psychologists Ltd. and holds shares in the company.
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