Noninvasive stimulation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex facilitates the inhibition of motivated responding.

Abstract

Self-control involves the inhibition of dominant response tendencies. Most research on self-control has examined the inhibition of appetitive tendencies, and recent evidence suggests that stimulation to increase right frontal cortical activity helps to inhibit approach-motivated responses. The current experiment paired an approach-avoidance joystick task with transcranial DC stimulation to test the effects of brain stimulation on the inhibition of both approach and avoidance response tendencies. Anodal stimulation over the right/cathodal stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (compared to the opposite pattern of stimulation or sham stimulation) caused participants to initiate motive-incongruent movements more quickly, thereby suggesting a shared neural mechanism for the self-control of both approach- and avoidance-motivated impulses. (PsycINFO Database Record