Trial reportScientific reports2017
Gender differences in cognitive Theory of Mind revealed by transcranial direct current stimulation on medial prefrontal cortex.
Trial report in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 57 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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
57 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) on the Cognitive Functions: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Neuropsychology review · 2025Pooled it
- Theory of mind in patients with mild cognitive impairment: A systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Improves Pain Empathy: A Randomized, Double-Blind, and Sham-Controlled Study Based on Event-Related Potentials (ERPs).Journal of pain research · 2025Trial
- Multisession tDCS combined with intrastimulation training improves emotion recognition in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2024Trial
- Cerebellar Asymmetry of Motivational Direction: Anger-Dependent Effects of Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Aggression in Healthy Volunteers.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2024Trial
- Reading proficiency influences the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation: Evidence from selective modulation of dorsal and ventral pathways of reading in bilinguals.Brain and language · 2020Trial
- Aging, sex and cognitive Theory of Mind: a transcranial direct current stimulation study.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- Enhancing theory of mind in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia with transcranial direct current stimulation.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2018Trial
- Sex Does Matter! The Influence of Sex on Outcomes of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS).Cells · 2026Review
- Common and distinct contributions of the dorsomedial prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices to social episodic memory.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- The moderating role of pre-adoptive reflective functioning in the association between early adversity and child difficulties after transnational adoption: a 4-year follow-up study.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- Stimulus-specific influence of gender on mental-rotation-related brain activity.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Sex differences in the effects of 10 Hz and 40 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation on spatial cognition in mice.Biology of sex differences · 2025Article
- Cross-Sectional Trajectories of Social Cognition in Later Life: Exploring Emotion Perception, Theory of Mind, and Emotional Empathy.Archives of clinical neuropsychology : the official journal of the National Academy of Neuropsychologists · 2025Article
- Are You a Closet Dualist? Evidence From Brief Implicit Association Task.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- Sex differences in motivational biases over instrumental actions.NPJ science of learning · 2024Article
- Spontaneous visual perspective-taking with constant attention cue: A modified dot-perspective task paradigm.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2024Article
- Larger corpus callosum volume is favorable for theory of mind development in healthy children.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Monitoring the neural activity associated with praying in Sahaja Yoga meditation.BMC neuroscience · 2023Article
- Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation for the Modulation of Aggressive Behavior-A Systematic Review of Randomized Sham-Controlled Studies.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Gender differences in social cognition are a long discussed issue, in particular those concerning Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e., the ability to explain and predict other people's mental states. The aim of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was to test the hypothesis that anodal tDCS over the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) selectively enhances cognitive ToM performance in females. In the first experiment we administered to sixteen females and sixteen males a cognitive ToM task during anodal or placebo tDCS over the mPFC. In the second experiment further sixteen females completed the task receiving anodal or placebo tDCS over the vertex. The results showed that anodal tDCS over the mPFC enhances ToM in females but not in males, an effect indicated by enhanced ToM in females that received anodal tDCS over the mPFC compared with females that received tDCS over the vertex. These findings are relevant for three reasons. First, we found evidence of gender-related differences in cognitive ToM, extending previous findings concerning affective ToM. Second, these differences emerge with anodal stimulation of the mPFC, confirming the crucial role of this area in cognitive ToM. Third, we show that taking into account gender-related differences is mandatory for the investigation of ToM.
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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.