Abstract
Emotions can be understood as behavioral, physiological, and subjective individual’s alteration due to a given situation. Several times, an efficient regulation of these emotions can promote psychological and social survival. It has been demonstrated that the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) presents a relevant role in cognitive control, especially during emotion regulation strategies. However, evidence for the role of the PFC and emotional regulation comes mostly from neuroimaging experiments lacking from causal information. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) has been shown to be an efficient noninvasive neuromodulation technique capable to address causal hypothesis. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of two regions of the PFC (Dorsolateral and Ventrolateral region) on different strategies of emotional reappraisal during the observation of negative images. 180 undergraduate students (mean age 21,75 ± 3,38) participated in this study, divided in two experiments (Dorsolateral PFC - n = 90; Ventrolateral PFC - n = 90). As not expected, DLPFC tDCS did not modulate the responses on the emotional regulation task. However, VLPFC tDCS resulted in less negative valence of negative images as well as decreased cardiac interbeat interval on earlier moments of emotional processing. These findings supports the general view about the role of the PFC on emotional regulation and, at the same time, advances the field by providing evidence that evaluation of negative stimuli is much more based on the VLPFC than on the DLPCF.
Highlights
Among its most diverse definitions, emotion can be understood as a physiological alteration and/or a cognitive process which drives the individual towards an action important for one’s survival[1]
The current study sought to investigate the role of prefrontal cortex (PFC), the dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) (Experiment 1) and the ventrolateral PFC (Experiment 2) in different strategies of cognitive reappraisal, considering the effects of inter-hemispheric differences on behavioural and psychophysiological measures
The ECG data expressed in terms of Interbeat Interval measure (IBI) values from Experiment 1 are an innovative measure of the significant effects of the Down-regulation strategy on the cognitive reappraisal of emotional images
Summary
Among its most diverse definitions, emotion can be understood as a physiological alteration and/or a cognitive process which drives the individual towards an action important for one’s survival[1]. Few studies have sought to understand the effect of tDCS during emotional regulation One of these is a recent study by[12], which showed that anodal tDCS to the right DLPFC resulted in a significant increase in subjects’ capacity for cognitive reappraisal as compared to a sham condition, both in terms of the up-regulation as well as the down-regulation of the current emotion, indicating a distinct role of the DLPFC in the cognitive control of emotion. A more recent study by[13] showed that anodal tDCS to the right DLPFC but not the left, is correlated with a greater cognitive control during emotional regulation, mainly with negative emotional images. It is important to emphasize that these tDCS findings are in line with TMS findings (for a review, see Lantrip et al.15), reinforcing the importance of these PFC regions in the emotional control
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