Trial reportDepression and anxiety2022
Transcranial direct current stimulation targeting the medial prefrontal cortex modulates functional connectivity and enhances safety learning in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Results from two pilot studies.
Trial report in Depression and anxiety, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 42 citations in OpenAlex.
- Noninvasive brain stimulation combined with evidence-based psychotherapy for psychiatric disorders: A meta-analysis of optimal implementation parameters.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Pooled it
- Linking electric field directionality to treatment outcome in OCD: Insights from patient-specific tDCS modeling.Translational psychiatry · 2026Trial
- Disgust-reduction evaluative conditioning (DREC) and tDCS in contamination-based OCD: a randomized controlled trial.BMC psychiatry · 2026Trial
- 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
- Frontopolar multifocal transcranial direct current stimulation reduces conditioned fear reactivity during extinction training: A pilot randomized controlled trial.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2023Trial
- Efficacy of personalized acupuncture combined with accelerated deep transcranial magnetic stimulation in mild cognitive impairment: A randomized controlled trial.Integrative medicine research · 2026Article
- Noninvasive brain stimulation combined with evidence-based psychotherapy for psychiatric disorders: A meta-analysis of optimal implementation parameters.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Burnout and the Brain-A Mechanistic Review of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Studies.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Deficient salience and default mode functional integration in high worry-proneness subject: a connectome-wide association study.Brain imaging and behavior · 2024Article
- Optimizing electrode placement for transcranial direct current stimulation in nonsuperficial cortical regions: a computational modeling study.Biomedical engineering letters · 2024Article
- Excitatory stimulation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex reduces cognitive gambling biases via improved feedback learning.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Anatomical and Functional Connectivity of Critical Deep Brain Structures and Their Potential Clinical Application in Brain Stimulation.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Right Prefrontal Cortical Thickness Is Associated With Response to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in Children With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2023Article
- Contemporary Approaches Toward Neuromodulation of Fear Extinction and Its Underlying Neural Circuits.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2023Article
- Single-dose psilocybin for treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder: A case report.Heliyon · 2022Article
- Noninvasive stimulation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex modulates rationality of human decision-making.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Microglia activation in the mPFC mediates anxiety-like behaviors caused by Staphylococcus aureus strain USA300.Brain and behavior · 2022Article
- Neuromodulation Using Transcranial Focused Ultrasound on the Bilateral Medial Prefrontal Cortex.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- The role of hippocampus in memory reactivation: an implication for a therapeutic target against opioid use disorder.Current addiction reports · 2022Review
- Neuromodulation of OCD: A review of invasive and non-invasive methods.Frontiers in neurology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundExposed-based psychotherapy is a mainstay of treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxious psychopathology. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the default mode network (DMN), which is anchored by the mPFC, promote safety learning. Neuromodulation targeting the mPFC might augment therapeutic safety learning and enhance response to exposure-based therapies.
methodsTo characterize the effects of mPFC neuromodulation on functional connectivity, 17 community volunteers completed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans before and after 20 min of frontopolar anodal multifocal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). To examine the effects of tDCS on therapeutic safety learning, 24 patients with OCD completed a pilot randomized clinical trial; they were randomly assigned (double-blind, 50:50) to receive active or sham frontopolar tDCS before completing an in vivo exposure and response prevention (ERP) challenge. Changes in subjective emotional distress during the ERP challenge were used to index therapeutic safety learning.
resultsIn community volunteers, frontal pole functional connectivity with the middle and superior frontal gyri increased, while connectivity with the anterior insula and basal ganglia decreased (ps < .001, corrected) after tDCS; functional connectivity between DMN and salience network also decreased after tDCS (ps < .001, corrected). OCD patients who received active tDCS exhibited more rapid therapeutic safety learning (ps < .05) during the ERP challenge than patients who received sham tDCS.
conclusionsFrontopolar tDCS may modulate mPFC and DMN functional connectivity and can accelerate therapeutic safety learning. Though limited by small samples, these findings motivate further exploration of the effects of frontopolar tDCS on neural and behavioral targets associated with exposure-based psychotherapies.
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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.