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Modulating emotional experience using electrical stimulation targeting the medial prefrontal cortex as indicated by fMRI

Rany Abend1, 2*, Roy Sar-el2, 3, Tal Gonen2, Itamar Jalon2, 4, Yair Bar-Haim1, 4 and Talma Hendler1, 2, 3, 4
  • 1 Tel Aviv University, School of Psychological Sciences, Israel
  • 2 Functional Brain Center, Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging, Sourasky Medical Center, Israel
  • 3 Tel Aviv University, Faculty of Medicine, Israel
  • 4 Tel Aviv University, Sagol school of Neuroscience, Israel

Implicit regulation of emotional experiences refers to the involuntary inhibition of responses and arousal to emotionally-salient stimuli, including a decrease in negative affect. This inhibition relies primarily on medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) regions exerting regulatory control over limbic structures. A diminished capacity to appropriately regulate emotions is associated with aberrant functionality in these regions, and can lead to psychopathology. Establishing means of modulating mPFC functionality may benefit research on the neural circuitry underlying emotion and its regulation, and aid in the development of therapeutic interventions for disorders associated with emotion dysregulation. Here, we combined transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive neuromodulation method, with concurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine whether stimulation targeting the mPFC (Fig. 1A) can facilitate implicit regulation of induced negative emotional experiences. Sixteen healthy participants were each scanned twice, one week apart, counterbalancing active stimulation in one session, and sham stimulation in the other (Fig. 1B). During each session, participants viewed short clips featuring negative and neutral content (emotion induction task), and were asked to rank their experienced emotional intensity in response each clip (Fig. 1C). The effect of stimulation the emotional experience elicited by the stimuli was assessed using the subjective reports (intensity of emotion and stress) and neural measures (changes in mPFC activity and functional connectivity). The effect of stimulation was consistently observed across different outcome measures. Behaviorally, active stimulation led to a significant reduction in the intensity of experienced negative emotions (Fig. 2A) and mitigated a rise in stress levels in response to emotion induction (Fig. 2B). Neurally, active stimulation led to a distributed effect on brain BOLD activation (p<0.01, FDR-corrected; Fig. 3A). Specifically, stimulation increased activation related to emotion induction in mPFC regions typically associated with implicit regulation of emotion, namely ventromedial prefrontal/orbitofrontal cortex (vmPFC) and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), as well as in the ventral striatum (VS), a core limbic structure (Fig. 3B). Stimulation-induced sgACC activation during processing of the emotional stimuli correlated positively with ranking of experienced emotion intensity. Furthermore, stimulation modulated functional connectivity between these regions and areas implicated in emotional processing (anterior insula, and amygdala), pointing to relevant network modulation. Finally, higher levels of depression were positively associated with individual levels of responsivity to stimulation in sgACC and vmPFC during emotional processing. Taken together, the current results demonstrate the capacity of tDCS to facilitate mPFC activation and modulate subjective emotional experiences. This capacity presents novel opportunities for the application of non-invasive brain stimulation for neuroscience and clinical research on emotion and its regulation.

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Keywords: transcranial direct current stimulation tDCS, Electric Stimulation, Emotion Regulation, Emotions, Medial prefrontal cortex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, fMRI, subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, ventral striatum

Conference: SAN2016 Meeting, Corfu, Greece, 6 Oct - 9 Oct, 2016.

Presentation Type: Poster Presentation in SAN2016 Conference

Topic: Posters

Citation: Abend R, Sar-el R, Gonen T, Jalon I, Bar-Haim Y and Hendler T (2016). Modulating emotional experience using electrical stimulation targeting the medial prefrontal cortex as indicated by fMRI. Conference Abstract: SAN2016 Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2016.220.00070

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Received: 29 Jul 2016; Published Online: 01 Aug 2016.

* Correspondence: Dr. Rany Abend, Tel Aviv University, School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv, Israel, rany.abend@nih.gov