Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left DLPFC improves emotion regulation

The study of emotion regulation constitutes a major area of research for having a complete picture of human emotional experience, and several lines of evidence claim that poor emotion regulation skills are particularly deleterious in different aspects of life. Previous tDCS studies have suggested the beneficial role of DLPFC stimulation to improve emotion processing and regulation. The present study was therefore conducted to confirm and extend the effects of DLPFC stimulation on emotion regulation by including both positive and negative emotional material. In this between subjects study, participants were randomly assigned to receive active or sham stimulation over the left DLPFC. Participants viewed negative, positive, and neutral pictures while attempting to decrease, increase, or not modulate their emotional reactions. Subjective reactions were assessed via on-line ratings. The main results show that anodal tDCS stimulation over the left DLPFC slightly improves the ability to increase emotion perception for positive emotions. More interestingly, the results demonstrate that tDCS enhances the regulation of both positive and negative emotions when the baseline is considered. This study provides additional data on the use of tDCS as a tool to increase emotion regulation not only for negative affective material, but also for positive ones.