The Effect of Transcranial Temporal Interference Stimulation (tTIS) on Pavlovian Bias

Abstract

In life, humans often approach the outcomes deemed valuable and avoid those that are harmful. This is known as the Pavlovian system. This default system is often adaptive, but it can also interfere with the more flexible instrumental system in pursuit of a goal. Research has indicated that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) plays a role in the arbitration process between these two systems. Due to the location of the dACC it has been difficult to focally stimulate it. Recently, transcranial temporal interference stimulation (tTIS) has been proposed as a new non-invasive brain stimulation technique to focally stimulate areas deeper in the cortex. In a preregistered, repeated measures, double-blinded study, we tested the effect of tTIS on the dACC. The participants (N = 21) completed a value-based Go/NoGo task designed to induce a conflict between the Pavlovian and instrumental system. We found no statistically significant results, leading us to speculate on whether this was due to tTIS not having its proposed effect or the dACC not responding to stimulation the way we hypothesized. These findings might have implications for better understanding the role of the dACC in decision making and for the future feasibility of tTIS.