The Effectiveness of High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS) over the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) in Improving Induced Emotion Dysregulation and Information Processing Speed

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

1 Neuroscience Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Medical Engineering, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background and Aim: Emotion regulation is an important and determining factor in psychological well-being and effective behavior of people, which plays an essential role in adapting to stressful life events. People who experience emotion dysregulation may show symptoms such as impulsive behaviors, severe anxiety, aggression, and problems with metacognition. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of the brain in improving emotion dysregulation and the speed of brain information processing.
Methods: This study is pre-post-test research. In this study, 20 healthy participants (male, right-handed) were used. The participants were randomly assigned to two anodal stimulation groups and sham (control) groups. By completing the ERQ and DTS questionnaires, as well as performing the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) before and after electrical stimulation of the brain by the HD-tDCS method in the L-DLPFC area, this study was followed up and carried out.
Results: After the intervention (stimulation) in the pre-post test comparison between the stimulation group and the control group, there was a difference in terms of evaluation variables, suppression, being absorbed by negative emotions, regulating efforts to relieve distress, the number of correct answers in the PASAT test and the time to answer the PASAT test. There was significance (P<0.05). This shows the effectiveness of the intervention (anodal stimulation) on these components between the stimulation and control groups. However, there was no significant difference between the stimulation and control groups in terms of emotional distress tolerance, subjective estimation of distress, and the number of incorrect answers in the PASAT test (P>0.05). Also, in the comparison of the pre-post test, time was not recognized as a significant factor in any of the research components.
Conclusion: High-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) improves some components of emotion dysregulation and also improves brain information processing speed.

Keywords

Journal of Military Medicine
Volume 26, Issue 2 - Serial Number 126
May and June 2024
Pages 2216-2226

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics