NCT07099521

The Effects of HD-tDCS on Cognitive Bias Among Individuals With Social Anxiety Symptoms

The Effects of High-definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Cognitive Bias Among Individuals With Social Anxiety Symptoms

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 74 (actual)
• Sponsor: South China Normal University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 24 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

To examine the offline effects of high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) on attention, interpretation and memory biases in youth with social anxiety.

Detailed description

In current study, we adopted a comparative intervention study with randomized controlled in which we delivered multiple courses of offline anodal HD-tDCS over the left DLPFC. The aim of this study was to explore the offline impact of HD-tDCS on cognitive bias (including attention, interpretation and memory bias) among youth with social anxiety symptoms. In addition, the researchers sought to further investigate the impact of tDCS stimulation on social anxiety. We hypothesized that anodal tDCS would activates the left DLPFC to facilitate cognitive control of threat-related information among youth with social anxiety, thereby reducing threat attention, interpretation and memory bias, and even improving social anxiety symptoms.

Conditions

• Social Anxiety Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	Active High-definition transcranial direct current stimulation	Participants completed 10 sessions of anodal HD-tDCS stimulation over 5 consecutive days (two 20-minute sessions per day, with a 3-hour interval between sessions). Stimulation was delivered using an HD-tES device (Soterix Medical, Inc, Woodbridge, NJ, USA), targeting the left dorsolateral prefrontal context (DLPFC). In the active HD-tDCS condition, current was ramped up to 2mA over 30 seconds, maintained for 20 minutes, then ramped down to 0mA at the end.
DEVICE	Sham high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation	Participants completed 10 sessions of sham HD-tDCS stimulation over 5 consecutive days (two 20-minute sessions per day, with a 3-hour interval between sessions). Stimulation was delivered using an HD-tES device (Soterix Medical, Inc, Woodbridge, NJ, USA), targeting the left dorsolateral prefrontal context (DLPFC). In the sham condition, the current was ramped up to 2mA within the first and last 30 seconds to mimic the sensation of stimulation, but then ramped down, with no current maintained at other times.

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-05-15
• Primary completion: 2024-11-24
• Completion: 2024-12-24
• First posted: 2025-08-01
• Last updated: 2025-12-10
• Results posted: 2025-12-10

Locations

1 site across 1 country: China