The modulation of emotional awareness using non-invasive brain stimulation techniques: a literature review on TMS and tDCS

Emotional awareness is defined as the conscious experience of emotions and plays an important role in realising the link between our feelings and what we think, do and say. In this literature review, we included studies examining those alterations in emotional awareness elicited by non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, specifically by the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and the transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The anodal tDCS over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex increases the ability to discriminate facial expressions; TMS over the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex significantly interferes with emotion recognition abilities. Similarly, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex contributes to emotional recognition abilities. Stimulations by repetitive repetitive TMS over the right intraparietal sulcus, improve the identification of emotions. The anodal stimulation over the orbitofrontal cortex, over the posterior superior temporal sulcus and over the right temporo-parietal junction, contributes to enhance emotion recognition abilities. The findings obtained from this work suggest that the brain stimulation techniques over specific brain regions may facilitate the increase of emotional awareness contributing to improve the psychological well-being of individuals.