ArticlePloS one2020
Repeated noninvasive stimulation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex reveals cumulative amplification of pleasant compared to unpleasant scene processing: A single subject pilot study.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Cognition, Mood, Pain, and Fatigue in Multiple Sclerosis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in neurology · 2021Pooled it
- Noninvasive ventromedial prefrontal cortex stimulation can enhance and impair affective learning from rewarding and threatening stimuli.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Self-referencing versus other-referencing in gambling: effects of vmPFC stimulation on decision-making and feedback processing.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Review
- Excitatory stimulation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex reduces cognitive gambling biases via improved feedback learning.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Review
- Non-invasive stimulation reveals ventromedial prefrontal cortex function in reward prediction and reward processing.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- The effects of a single aerobic exercise session on mood and neural emotional reactivity in depressed and healthy young adults: A late positive potential study.Psychophysiology · 2023Article
- Noninvasive stimulation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex modulates rationality of human decision-making.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Brain Stimulation for Emotion Regulation in Adolescents With Psychiatric Disorders: Study Protocol for a Clinical-Transdiagnostical, Randomized, Triple-Blinded and Sham-Controlled Neurotherapeutic Trial.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is a major hub of the reward system and has been shown to activate specifically in response to pleasant / rewarding stimuli. Previous studies demonstrate enhanced pleasant cue reactivity after single applications of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the vmPFC. Here we present a pilot case study in which we assess the cumulative impact of multiple consecutive vmPFC-tDCS sessions on the processing of visual emotional stimuli in an event-related MEG recording design. The results point to stable modulation of increased positivity biases (pleasant > unpleasant stimulus signal strength) after excitatory vmPFC stimulation and a reversed pattern (pleasant < unpleasant) after inhibitory stimulation across five consecutive tDCS sessions. Moreover, cumulative effects of these emotional bias modulations were observable for several source-localized spatio-temporal clusters, suggesting an increase in modulatory efficiency by repeated tDCS sessions. This pilot study provides evidence for improvements in the effectiveness and utility of a novel tDCS paradigm in the context of emotional processing.
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.