Trial reportPloS one2014
Does transcranial direct current stimulation to prefrontal cortex affect mood and emotional memory retrieval in healthy individuals?
Trial report in PloS one, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prefrontal tDCS fails to modulate memory retrieval in younger and older adults.Current biology : CB · 2025Trial
- The effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on within- and cross-paradigm transfer following multi-session backward recall training.Brain and cognition · 2020Trial
- Enhancing positive memory schemas with tDCS: a pilot study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- When Two Become One: Singular Duos and the Neuroethical Frontiers of Brain-to-Brain Interfaces.Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees · 2024Article
- Non-invasive brain stimulation and neuroenhancement.Clinical neurophysiology practice · 2022Review
- Home-Based Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to Prevent and Treat Symptoms Related to Stress: A Potential Tool to Remediate the Behavioral Consequences of the COVID-19 Isolation Measures?Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2020Article
- The effect of cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation during rapid eye-movement sleep on neutral and emotional memory.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- Affective Processing in Non-invasive Brain Stimulation Over Prefrontal Cortex.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2017Review
- Article
- Prefrontal Electrical Stimulation in Non-depressed Reduces Levels of Reported Negative Affects from Daily Stressors.Frontiers in psychology · 2016Article
- Does non-invasive brain stimulation applied over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex non-specifically influence mood and emotional processing in healthy individuals?Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2015Review
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation: treatments for cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms in the neurodegenerative dementias?Alzheimer's research & therapy · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Studies using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of prefrontal cortex to improve symptoms of depression have had mixed results. We examined whether using tDCS to change the balance of activity between left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) can alter mood and memory retrieval of emotional material in healthy volunteers. Participants memorised emotional images, then tDCS was applied bilaterally to DLPFC while they performed a stimulus-response compatibility task. Participants were then presented with a set of images for memory retrieval. Questionnaires to examine mood and motivational state were administered at the beginning and end of each session. Exploratory data analyses showed that the polarity of tDCS to DLPFC influenced performance on a stimulus-response compatibility task and this effect was dependent on participants' prior motivational state. However, tDCS polarity had no effect on the speed or accuracy of memory retrieval of emotional images and did not influence positive or negative affect. These findings suggest that the balance of activity between left and right DLPFC does not play a critical role in the mood state of healthy individuals. We suggest that the efficacy of prefrontal tDCS depends on the initial activation state of neurons and future work should take this into account.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.