Social-evaluative threat (SET) - a situation in which one could be negatively evaluated by others - elicits profound (psycho)physiological reactivity which, if chronically present and not adaptively regulated, has deleterious effects on mental and physical health. Decreased self-awareness and increased other-awareness are understood to be an adaptive response to SET. Attentional deployment – the process of selectively attending to certain aspects of emotional stimuli to modulate emotional reactivity – is supported by fronto-parietal and fronto-limbic networks, with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex being a central hub. The primary aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of active (versus sham) prefrontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on self and other-attentional deployment during the exposure to a SET context. Seventy-four female participants received active or sham tDCS and were subsequently exposed to a rigged social feedback paradigm. In this paradigm a series of social evaluations were presented together with a photograph of the supposed evaluator and a self- photograph of the participant, while gaze behavior (time to first fixation, total fixation time) and skin conductance responses (SCRs; a marker of emotional reactivity) were measured. For half of the evaluations, participants could anticipate the valence (negative or positive) of the evaluation a priori. Analyses showed that participants receiving active tDCS were a) slower to fixate on their self-photograph, b) spent less time fixating on their self-photograph, and c) spent more time fixating on the evaluator photograph. During unanticipated evaluations, active tDCS was associated with less time spent fixating on the evaluation. Furthermore, among those receiving active tDCS, SCRs were attenuated as a function of slower times to fixate on the self-photograph. Taken together, these results suggest that in a context of SET, prefrontal tDCS decreases self-attention while increasing other-attention, and that attenuated self-referential attention specifically may be a neurocognitive mechanism through which tDCS reduces emotional reactivity. Moreover, the results suggest that tDCS reduces vigilance towards stimuli that possibly convey threatening information, corroborating past research in this area.

中文翻译：

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前额叶 tDCS 减弱自我参照注意力部署：对社会评价威胁的适应性情绪反应的潜在机制

社会评价威胁（SET）——一种可能受到他人负面评价的情况——会引发深刻的（心理）生理反应，如果长期存在且不进行适应性调节，会对身心健康产生有害影响。自我意识的降低和他人意识的增强被认为是对 SET 的适应性反应。注意力部署——选择性地关注情绪刺激的某些方面以调节情绪反应的过程——由额顶叶和额边缘网络支持，其中背外侧前额叶皮层是中枢。本研究的主要目的是调查在暴露于 SET 环境期间主动（与假）前额经颅直流电刺激 (tDCS) 对自我和其他注意力部署的影响。74 名女性参与者接受了主动或虚假的 tDCS，随后暴露于被操纵的社会反馈范式。在这个范式中，一系列的社会评价与假定的评价者的照片和参与者的自拍照一起呈现，同时凝视行为（首次注视时间、总注视时间）和皮肤电导反应（SCR；情绪反应）进行了测量。对于一半的评估，参与者可以先验地预测评估的效价（负面或正面）。分析表明，接受主动 tDCS 的参与者 a）注视自拍照的速度较慢，b）注视自拍照的时间较少，c）注视评估者照片的时间较多。在意外评估期间，主动 tDCS 与花在评估上的时间较少相关。此外，在那些接受主动 tDCS 治疗的人中，SCR 会随着注视自拍照的时间变慢而减弱。总而言之，这些结果表明，在 SET 的背景下，前额叶 tDCS 减少了自我注意力，同时增加了他人注意力，并且自我参照注意力的减弱可能是 tDCS 减少情绪反应性的一种神经认知机制。此外，结果表明，经颅直流电刺激降低了对可能传达威胁信息的刺激的警惕性，证实了该领域过去的研究。