title: Transcranial Electrical Stimulation over Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Modulates Processing of Social Cognitive and Affective Information.
abstract: Recent neurofunctional studies suggested that lateral prefrontal cortex is a domain-general cognitive control area modulating computation of social information. Neuropsychological evidence reported dissociations between cognitive and affective components of social cognition. Here, we tested whether performance on social cognitive and affective tasks can be modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). To this aim, we compared the effects of tDCS on explicit recognition of emotional facial expressions (affective task), and on one cognitive task assessing the ability to adopt another person's visual perspective. In a randomized, cross-over design, male and female healthy participants performed the two experimental tasks after bi-hemispheric tDCS (sham, left anodal/right cathodal, and right anodal/left cathodal) applied over DLPFC. Results showed that only in male participants explicit recognition of fearful facial expressions was significantly faster after anodal right/cathodal left stimulation with respect to anodal left/cathodal right and sham stimulations. In the visual perspective taking task, instead, anodal right/cathodal left stimulation negatively affected both male and female participants' tendency to adopt another's point of view. These findings demonstrated that concurrent facilitation of right and inhibition of left lateral prefrontal cortex can speed-up males' responses to threatening faces whereas it interferes with the ability to adopt another's viewpoint independently from gender. Thus, stimulation of cognitive control areas can lead to different effects on social cognitive skills depending on the affective vs. cognitive nature of the task, and on the gender-related differences in neural organization of emotion processing.
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy.
authors.forename: Massimiliano
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Conson
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy.
authors.forename: Domenico
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Errico
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuromotor Physiology, Scientific Institute Foundation Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Elisabetta
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mazzarella
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy.
authors.forename: Marianna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Giordano
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy.
authors.forename: Dario
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Grossi
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy.
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Trojano
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D018592:Cross-Over Studies; D003657:Decision Making; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D065908:Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult