Emotion regulation (ER) is essential for human well-being and mental health and plays a crucial role in our daily lives, affecting our mental well-being, decision-making processes, and social interactions. The study and improvement of emotion regulation techniques have garnered significant attention over the past years.
Recent advances in noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), have enabled promising tools for modulating neural circuits underlying ER.

Growing evidence suggests that NIBS of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) can enhance ER ability and reduce negative emotions, indicating the PFC's causal role in ER: when applied to the PFC, these techniques can enhance or inhibit neuronal excitability, influencing the balance of neural circuits involved in emotion regulation. By interfering with PFC activity, NIBS can strengthen the PFC's inhibitory control over emotional responses, helping individuals regulate and manage their emotions more effectively. The increase in PFC functioning may reduce excessive emotional reactivity and impulsivity, leading to improved emotional regulation skills. Conversely, inhibitory stimulation applied to the PFC may decrease hyperactivity or over-engagement of the PFC, which can occur in certain emotion dysregulation disorders. Noninvasive brain stimulation can help individuals regain control over their emotions and promote adaptive emotional responses by restoring a more balanced PFC activity level.

Emotion regulation involves a complex interplay between cognitive, behavioral, and neural mechanisms. Effective emotion regulation contributes to psychological resilience, mental health, and adaptive functioning. ER can be explicit (voluntary) or implicit (automatic). NIBS may facilitate both types, offering a comprehensive approach to managing emotions. NIBS has also advanced our understanding of ER's neural mechanisms and enabled novel interventions for psychiatric conditions like depression or anxiety. Issues to address include optimizing NIBS targets using neuro-navigation; examining how NIBS during explicit/implicit ER affects PFC connectivity with deeper brain regions; combining subjective, physiological, and neural measures to assess NIBS's impact; using multi-target NIBS, hyperscanning during NIBS, and NIBS-neurofeedback to enhance validity and translational potential.

While the field of NIBS for emotion regulation is still evolving, initial studies have shown promising results. In this context, NIBS offers a promising approach to understanding and improving ER. The goal of this Research Topic is to gather cutting-edge research and comprehensive reviews addressing the important field of non-invasive brain stimulation applied to emotion regulation aiming to refine stimulation protocols, identify optimal targets within the PFC, and understand individual differences in treatment response.

We encourage the submission of original research articles, systematic reviews, and opinion articles exploring the potential of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques in modulating emotion regulation processes and their potential applications in clinical settings.

We welcome articles addressing (but not limited to) the following:

- Verifying NIBS' effectiveness for ER
- Modulatory role of NIBS techniques on ER
- How explicit/implicit ER with PFC-targeting NIBS alters connectivity between PFC and deeper areas
- Using neuro-navigation to validate previous findings
- Multi-target NIBS protocols
- Hyperscanning and NIBS-neurofeedback techniques
- NIBS to diagnosis and treatment of ER dysfunctions

Submit your idea

Impact

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

Submit your idea

Impact