Trial reportScientific reports2019
Aging, sex and cognitive Theory of Mind: a transcranial direct current stimulation study.
Trial report in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The medial prefrontal cortex as a proposed regulatory structure in the relationship between anxiety and perceived social support: a review.BMC psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Sex matters for the enhancement of cognitive training with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).Biology of sex differences · 2023Trial
- Alexithymia and Social Cognition in the General Population: Further Evidence on the Relationship with Theory of Mind, Emotion Recognition, and Empathy.Journal of Intelligence · 2026Article
- How to Improve Cognitive Flexibility: Evidence From Noninvasive Neuromodulation Techniques.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2025Review
- Comparing the effect of transcranial random noise stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation over the motor cortex on motor performance in men vs. women: a randomized controlled crossover study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Effects of a single tDCS with mirror therapy stimulation on hand function in healthy individuals.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- Sensorimotor performance after high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation over the primary somatosensory or motor cortices in men versus women.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Anodal and cathodal transcranial direct current stimulations of prefrontal cortex in a rodent model of Alzheimer's disease.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2022Article
- They Cannot, They Will Not, or We Are Asking the Wrong Questions: Re-examining Age-Related Decline in Social Cognition.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- What transcranial direct current stimulation intensity is best for cognitive enhancement?Journal of neurophysiology · 2021Article
- Theory of Mind Performance Predicts tDCS-Mediated Effects on the Medial Prefrontal Cortex: A Pilot Study to Investigate the Role of Sex and Age.Brain sciences · 2020Article
- Response Variability in Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Why Sex Matters.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2020Article
- Sex difference in tDCS current mediated by changes in cortical anatomy: A study across young, middle and older adults.Brain stimulationArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Aging is accompanied by changes in cognitive abilities and a great interest is spreading among researchers about aging impact on social cognition skills, such as the Theory of Mind (ToM). Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been used in social cognition studies founding evidence of sex-related different effects on cognitive ToM task in a young people sample. In this randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled study, we applied one active and one sham tDCS session on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during a cognitive ToM task, including both social (i.e., communicative) and nonsocial (i.e., private) intention attribution conditions, in sixty healthy aging individuals (30 males and 30 females). In half of the participants the anode was positioned over the mPFC, whereas in the other half the cathode was positioned over the mPFC. The results showed that: (i) anodal tDCS over the mPFC led to significant slower reaction times (vs. sham) for social intention attribution task only in female participants; (ii) No effects were found in both females and males during cathodal stimulation. We show for the first time sex-related differences in cognitive ToM abilities in healthy aging, extending previous findings concerning young participants.
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