Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32021208›Full record

ReviewNeuropsychiatric disease and treatment2020

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Patients with Anxiety: Current Perspectives.

Dirson João Stein, Liciane Fernandes Medeiros, Wolnei Caumo, Iraci Ls Torres

Open access · goldAbstract readReview
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
50citing papers in PubMed, 3 pooled it
5.3field-weighted citation impact, top 4% of its field
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

50 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 96 citations in OpenAlex.

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  18. tDCS and neurofeedback in ADHD treatment.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2025
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.

Dirson João Stein *Laboratório de Farmacologia da Dor e Neuromodulação, Investigações Pré-Clínicas, Centro de Pesquisa Experimental, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Liciane Fernandes Medeiros *Laboratório de Farmacologia da Dor e Neuromodulação, Investigações Pré-Clínicas, Centro de Pesquisa Experimental, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Wolnei CaumoPrograma de Pós-Graduação em Medicina: Ciências Médicas, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.ORCID 0000-0002-5083-4658
Iraci Ls TorresLaboratório de Farmacologia da Dor e Neuromodulação, Investigações Pré-Clínicas, Centro de Pesquisa Experimental, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.ORCID 0000-0002-3081-115X
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul · BR

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Anxiety is one of the most prevalent and debilitating psychiatric conditions worldwide. Pharmaco- and psycho-therapies have been employed in the treatment of human anxiety to date. Yet, either alone or in combination, unsatisfactory patient outcomes are prevalent, resulting in a considerable number of people whose symptoms fail to respond to conventional therapies with symptoms remaining after intervention. The demand for new therapies has given birth to several noninvasive brain stimulation techniques. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has arisen as a promising tool and has been proven to be safe and well tolerated for the treatment of many diseases, including chronic pain, depression, and anxiety. Here, reports of the use of tDCS in anxiety disorders in human patients were reviewed and summarized. A literature search was conducted in mid-2019, to identify clinical studies that evaluated the use of tDCS for the treatment of anxiety behavior. The PubMed, Web of Science, and Scielo and PsycInfo databases were explored using the following descriptors: "anxiety", "anxious behavior", "tDCS", and "transcranial direct current stimulation". Among the selected articles, considerable variability in the type of tDCS treatment applied in interventions was observed. Evidence shows that tDCS may be more effective when used in combination with drugs and cognitive behavioral therapies; however future large-scale clinical trials are recommended to better clarify the real effects of this intervention alone, or in combination with others.

Indexed as

anxious behaviorclinical researchhumanspsychiatric disordertranscranial electrical stimulation

Identifiers

PMID32021208
PMCPMC6969693
OpenAlexW2999351975

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.