Attenuating anger and aggression with neuromodulation of the vmPFC: A simultaneous tDCS-fMRI study

Gilam, Gadi; Abend, Rany; Gurevitch, Guy; Erdman, Alon; Baker, Halen; Ben‐Zion, Ziv; Hendler, Talma

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2018.09.010

Cited by 63 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 70 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The studies included in this review indicate that there is an asymmetric predominance of PFC functioning in eliciting anger states, lowering the threshold of their appearance when activation of the left PFC predominates over the right, specifically, stimulation of the left DLPFC and VLPFC. By contrast, the activation of the right DLPFC, VLPFC, and inferior frontal gyrus, as well as the bilateral VMPFC, tends to be associated with decreases in anger-oriented states and increased efforts to control anger expression [41,47,48,54,[59][60][61][62][63][64]. Obviously, the relationship between the application of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques over the PFC and the reduction in anger or irritability is complex, as expected.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…With regard to violence proneness measured by laboratory tasks, most of the studies included revealed significant and relatively similar results. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that these studies measured violence proneness with a well-validated computer task, the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) [41,47,48,54,[61][62][63][64]. On this task, participants compete with a virtual opponent, and they must respond to a provocation (fictitious character/opponent).…”

Section: Laboratory Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This test makes it possible to manipulate the degree of provocation and assess the participants' perception of provocation and their type of aggressive reaction (reactive or proactive). Finally, it is also important to keep in mind that all the studies included a sham-group as controls, and some of them were double-blinded [41,54,60,63].…”

Section: Laboratory Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, stimulation of the right PFC entails decreases in aggressive behaviour, whereas stimulation of the left PFC increases aggressive behaviour. Thus, after stimulation of the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), participants experienced a decrease in violent reactions to provocation [64], even after being exposed to violent videogames [24,27,37,[46][47][48]52,[55][56][57][58][61][62][63][64]. Nonetheless, stimulation of the left VLPFC increased aggression after provocation [54].…”

Section: Laboratory Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, stimulation of the left VLPFC increased aggression after provocation [54]. Furthermore, bilateral stimulation of the ventromedial PFC (VMPFC) produced a decrease in their aggressive reactions after provocation [63]. Moreover, stimulation of the right inferior frontal gyrus was also associated with less explicit violent reactions to provocations but showed a Machiavellian reaction to increase their chances of obtaining profits [60].…”

Section: Laboratory Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Techniques to Reduce Violence Proneness by Interfering in Anger and Irritability

Romero‐Martínez

Bressanutti

Moya-Albiol

2020

JCM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The field of neurocriminology has proposed several treatments (e.g., pharmacological, brain surgery, androgen-deprivation therapy, neurofeedback) to reduce violence proneness, but unfortunately, their effectiveness has been limited due to their side-effects. Therefore, it is necessary to explore alternative techniques to improve patients’ behavioural regulation with minimal undesirable effects. In this regard, non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, which are based on applying changing magnetic fields or electric currents to interfere with cortical excitability, have revealed their usefulness in alleviating the symptomatology of several mental disorders. However, to our knowledge, there are no reviews that assess whether these techniques are useful for reducing violence proneness. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria using the following databases: PsycINFO, PubMed, Dialnet, Psicodoc, Web of Knowledge, and the Cochrane Library. We initially identified 3746 entries, and eventually included 56 publications. Most of the studies were unanimous in concluding that the application of these techniques over the prefrontal cortex (PFC) was not sufficient to promote anger and irritability reductions in euthymic individuals of both genders. Nevertheless, the application of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, especially transcranial direct current stimulation, over the right PFC seemed to reduce violent reactions in these individuals by interfering with the interpretation of the unfavourable situations (e.g., threating signals) or inner states that evoked anger. In antisocial and pathological populations, the conclusions were provided by a few pilot studies with important methodological weaknesses. The main conclusion of these studies was that bilateral stimulation of the PFC satisfactorily reduced anger and irritability only in inmates, patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), people who suffered a closed-head injury, and agitated patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Moreover, combining these techniques with risperidone considerably reduced aggressiveness in these patients. Therefore, it is necessary to be cautious about the benefits of these techniques to control anger, due the methodological weaknesses of these studies. Nonetheless, they offer valuable opportunities to prevent violence by designing new treatments combining brain stimulation with current strategies, such as psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, in order to promote lasting changes.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Laboratory Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Laboratory Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Laboratory Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Laboratory Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Techniques to Reduce Violence Proneness by Interfering in Anger and Irritability

Romero‐Martínez

Bressanutti

Moya-Albiol

2020

JCM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Representational similarity analysis of self‐ versus other‐processing: Effect of trait aggressiveness

Knyazev,

Savostyanov,

Bocharov

et al. 2024

Aggressive Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study, using the self/other adjective judgment task, we aimed to explore how people perceive themselves in comparison to various other people, including friends, strangers, and those they dislike. Next, using representational similarity analysis, we sought to elucidate how these perceptual similarities and differences are represented in brain activity and how aggressiveness is related to these representations. Behavioral ratings show that, on average, people tend to consider themselves more like their friends than neutral strangers, and least like people they dislike. This pattern of similarity is positively correlated with neural representation in social and cognitive circuits of the brain and negatively correlated with neural representation in emotional centers that may represent emotional arousal associated with various social objects. Aggressiveness seems to predispose a person to a pattern of behavior that is the opposite of the average pattern, that is, a tendency to think of oneself as less like one's friends and more like one's enemies. This corresponds to an increase in the similarity of the behavioral representation with the representation in the emotional centers and a decrease in its similarity with the representation in the social and cognitive centers. This can be seen as evidence that in individuals prone to aggression, behavior in the social environment may depend to a greater extent on the representation of social objects in the emotional rather than social and cognitive brain circuits.

show abstract

Structural and functional biomarkers of the insula subregions predict sex differences in aggression subscales

Long

Fan

et al. 2022

Human Brain Mapping

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aggression is a common and complex social behavior that is associated with violence and mental diseases. Although sex differences were observed in aggression, the neural mechanism for the effect of sex on aggression behaviors remains unclear, especially in specific subscales of aggression. In this study, we investigated the effects of sex on aggression subscales, gray matter volume (GMV), and functional connectivity (FC) of each insula subregion as well as the correlation of aggression subscales with GMV and FC. This study found that sex significantly influenced (a) physical aggression, anger, and hostility; (b) the GMV of all insula subregions; and (c) the FC of the dorsal agranular insula (dIa), dorsal dysgranular insula (dId), and ventral dysgranular and granular insula (vId_vIg). Additionally, mediation analysis revealed that the GMV of bilateral dIa mediates the association between sex and physical aggression, and left dId-left medial orbital superior frontal gyrus FC mediates the relationship between sex and anger. These findings revealed the neural mechanism underlying the sex differences in aggression subscales and the important role of the insula in aggression differences between males and females. This finding could potentially explain sexual dimorphism in neuropsychiatric disorders and improve dysregulated aggressive behavior.Haixia Long and Ming Fan contributed equally to this study.

show abstract

Attenuating anger and aggression with neuromodulation of the vmPFC: A simultaneous tDCS-fMRI study

Cited by 63 publications

References 70 publications

A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Techniques to Reduce Violence Proneness by Interfering in Anger and Irritability

A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Techniques to Reduce Violence Proneness by Interfering in Anger and Irritability

Representational similarity analysis of self‐ versus other‐processing: Effect of trait aggressiveness

Structural and functional biomarkers of the insula subregions predict sex differences in aggression subscales

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About