tDCS as a treatment for anxiety and related cognitive deficits.
INTRODUCTION
Anxiety is characterized by psychological, physiological, and cognitive complaints. Current treatments have significant limitations, and often overlook any potential benefits to common cognitive symptoms, notably attention and executive function issues. The current study aimed to investigate the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on both common anxiety symptoms and executive function abilities in a college aged sample.


METHOD
As this is one of the first large scale anxiety studies utilizing tDCS, participants were given a single session of tDCS (anodal, cathodal, or sham) for 20 min at 2 mA over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC). Participants also completed a series of self-reported anxiety measures and measures of executive functioning (Rey-O Copy and Wisconsin Card Sorting Task).


RESULTS
While there were no differences in anxiety between tDCS groups, a trend was noted demonstrating better performance on Rey-O Copy for the cathodal group. Anxiety increased pre to post for all groups.


CONCLUSION
Overall, results suggest that while anodal stimulation of the lDLPFC may benefit cognitive abilities for this population, targeting psychological symptoms of anxiety likely requires stimulation over other cortex, possibly right DLPFC. Further, the use of tDCS, whether active or sham, may be distressing to patients.
['Garcia|Sarah|S|', 'Nalven|Mackenzie|M|', 'Ault|Abagail|A|', 'Eskenazi|Michael A|MA|']
D001007:Anxiety D003071:Cognition D056344:Executive Function D006801:Humans D017397:Prefrontal Cortex D065908:Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation D055815:Young Adult
tDCS Anxiety Executive function