Description
Error monitoring, the process by which we recognize and respond to the commission of errors, has been shown to be reliably increased in individuals with anxiety disorders. Therefore, a potential targeted treatment for anxiety disorders could involve reducing error monitoring in anxious individuals. One way to measure error monitoring is with an eventrelated potential (ERP) component known as the error-related negativity (ERN). Preliminary evidence has suggested that an emerging neuromodulatory technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may be effective at modulating the amplitude of the ERN. However, the few published studies on this topic have produced inconsistent results. Therefore, the present study included two experiments which were designed to investigate whether tDCS can consistently and reliably modulate the ERN and, further, whether the effect of tDCS on the ERN is dependent on an individual’s level of anxiety. In both experiments, we found that tDCS was not able to modulate the ERN or other markers of error processing. Additionally, the effect of tDCS on the ERN was not dependent on anxiety levels. These findings indicate that tDCS may not be an effective treatment for reducing error monitoring in individuals with anxiety. Keywords: anxiety disorders, ERN, ERPs, error monitoring, error-related negativity, tDCS, transcranial direct current stimulation
