School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Institute of Neural Management Sciences, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
PLoS One. 2023 Apr 10;18(4):e0284262. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284262. eCollection 2023.
Social exclusion has been found to impair working memory (WM). However, the emotional mechanism underlying this adverse effect remains unclear. Besides, little is known about how to alleviate this adverse effect. In the current study, 128 participants were randomly assigned to a social excluded group or an included group while they received anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) or sham tDCS over the right ventrolateral pre-frontal cortex (rVLPFC), then they completed the 2-back task. ANOVA results showed that under the sham tDCS condition, mood rating score and 2-back task accuracy of excluded participants were both lower than included participants, and after anodal tDCS, mood rating score and 2-back task accuracy of excluded participants were both higher compared to sham tDCS. Besides, the mediation model showed that negative emotion mediated the relationship between social exclusion and WM under the sham tDCS condition, while the mediating effect disappeared under the anodal tDCS condition. Based on these results, we argued that anodal tDCS over the rVLPFC could alleviate the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM by reducing negative emotion. These findings contributed to further understanding of the emotional mechanism underlying the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM, and providing a clinical treatment in response to social exclusion.
社会排斥被发现会损害工作记忆（WM）。然而，这种不利影响的情绪机制仍不清楚。此外，对于如何减轻这种不利影响知之甚少。在当前的研究中，128 名参与者被随机分配到社会排斥组或包容组，同时接受经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）或假 tDCS 刺激右侧腹外侧前额叶皮质（rVLPFC），然后他们完成了 2 -back 任务。方差分析结果表明，在假 tDCS 条件下，被排斥者的情绪评分和 2-back 任务的准确性均低于被包容者，而在阳极 tDCS 后，被排斥者的情绪评分和 2-back 任务的准确性均高于假 tDCS。此外，中介模型显示，在假 tDCS 条件下，负性情绪中介了社会排斥与 WM 之间的关系，而在阳极 tDCS 条件下，中介效应消失。基于这些结果，我们认为，rVLPFC 的阳极 tDCS 通过减少负性情绪，可以减轻社会排斥对 WM 的不利影响。这些发现有助于进一步理解社会排斥对 WM 的不利影响的情绪机制，并为应对社会排斥提供临床治疗。
