Negative Emotion Perception Altered With Magnetic Brain Stimulation
6 years, 2 months ago
9903
0
Posted on Feb 11, 2018, 11 a.m.
Processing of negative emotion can be weakened or strengthened by tuning the excitability of the right frontal part of the brain according to a study published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
Despite the use of inhibitory stimulation methods that are currently used to treat depression, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation techniques show that excitatory stimulation works better to decreased responses to fearful images.
Processing of negative emotion can be weakened or strengthened by tuning the excitability of the right frontal part of the brain according to a study published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
Despite the use of inhibitory stimulation methods that are currently used to treat depression, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation techniques show that excitatory stimulation works better to decreased responses to fearful images.
These results are the first support to the idea that modulating the right hemisphere frontal region of the brain directly affects the regulation of processing emotional information, and point out the scope of potential therapeutic applications of rTMS.
Disruption of the processing of emotion in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, which are thought to be the cause of increased negative emotions diminishing positive emotion in cases of depression. Using magnetic stimulation to decrease excitability of the right dIPFC has been shown to have antidepressant effects, a process that has yet to be fully tested in humans.
41 healthy individuals were divided into 2 groups to study the effects of a single session of inhibitory magnetic stimulation of the right dIPFC. Participants had a viewing of fearful faces and images to evoke negative emotion, or neutral faces for comparison while an RTMS was being conducted on each individual.
Inhibitory and excitatory rTMS were observed to have opposite effects. Inhibitory increased visual sensory processing and excitatory reduced visual sensory processing. Excitatory rTMS decreased participants reaction times to responding to fearful faces and decreased feelings of emotional arousal, both were increased by inhibitory rTMS.
Despite this limitation of only healthy individuals participating in the study, it should still serve to encourage more research into the mechanisms of inhibitory and excitatory magnetic stimulation of the right dIPFC in the treatment of depression.
Materials provided by Elsevier.
Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Swantje Notzon, Christian Steinberg, Peter Zwanzger, Markus Junghöfer. Modulating emotion perception – Opposing effects of inhibitory and excitatory prefrontal cortex stimulation. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2017.12.007
