Investigating the sex-dependent effects of prefrontal cortex stimulation on response execution and inhibition

Abstract

Highlights 1. In a fully counterbalanced (for sex and all experimental conditions), sham-controlled cross-over study, we examined the effects of tDCS over the left DLPFC in the context of Stop-Signal task. 2. The effects of tDCS on response inhibition was uniform across both males and females. 3. The effects of tDCS on response execution differed in males and females. 4. The tDCS mainly modulated the practice-related (learning-related) changes in participants’ performance, but these effects of tDCS were different between males and females. 5. These findings highlight the need to adequately control for participants' sex and the need to develop sex-specific tDCS protocols in clinical settings.

Keywords

• Sex dependency of cognitive functions
• Brain stimulation
• Learning
• Stop-Signal Task