Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to Improve Decision Making and Reduce Obsession Symptoms

Objective: recent studies on treating obsessive compulsive disorder (ocd) have investigated noninvasive brain stimulation techniques like transcranial direct current stimulation (tdcs) to enhance patients’ performance. this study aimed to analyzed the affect of anodal and cathodal tdcs applied over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlpfc) on higher cognitive process and reduce obsession symptoms in patients with ocd. methods: the current study is analysis of variance. in this regard, 20 patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (n=20) were randomly assigned to receive either experimental (active) or control (sham) tdcs. measuring cognitive functions, the participants done a set of decision making neuropsychological tasks; and for obsession symptoms, the yale-brown obsessive compulsive and beck anxiety scale (bai) were used. we applied anode electrode over the right dlpfc (f4), and cathode electrode over the left dlpfc (f3) region in 15 sessions within 20 minutes. results: after 15 sessions of applying tdcs, patients showed significant improvement in decision making tasks. similar results were determined obsession symptoms. conclusion: the data were analyzed by spss 18.0.0 software, using analysis of variance methods.this study demonstrated that anodal tdcs over left dlpfc, concurrent with cathodal tdcs over right dlpfc, improved cognitive impairment and reduced obsession symptoms in patients with ocd.